


Keep Your Nerve and See This Through

by PanBoleyn



Series: Winds of Change and Chance [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Romantic Backstory, John Silver Has A Past After All, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Season 2 Rewrite, The Daemons Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-04-21 19:50:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: The Walrus crew returns to Nassau only to find that everything has changed while they're gone. While Flint and Silver adjust to their newfound partnership and seek a way back to the Urca gold, Miranda is tired of being tucked away inland - and their daemons are beside them, even if they have objections.Season 2 in the daemonverse, focused on Miranda, Flint, and Silver.





	1. All The Rules Rearranged

At first, Miranda only attends church because she’s bored enough to want to see how Pastor Lambrick reacts. She is no Puritan, after all - services had always been High Church, in both the Barlow family and the Hamilton one, though she and Thomas once attended a Catholic Mass and a Quaker meeting because he was _curious_ about the differences.

 

 

He’d liked the Quakers more; she had appreciated the aesthetics of the Catholics, if nothing else. Both of their daemons had laughed at them.

 

 

But after two visits, something unexpected starts to happen. Her neighbors, the people who had ignored her, whose children had occasionally thrown rocks at her, start talking to her. It turns out that the boy who’d called her a witch and thrown a stone at her only weeks ago is called Matthew, and his mother ushers him over to apologize. Miranda finds her long-dormant society smile for his mother, and a more genuine one for the boy, who had, after all, only been repeating what he’d heard. The mother’s sparrow daemon flutters his wings uncertainly, while Matthew’s daemon becomes a small black cat for a moment. That makes Arete’s ears twitch with amusement, and then the young daemon shifts into a floppy-eared puppy who trots off beside her boy.

 

 

“Do they think we really believe it?” Arete asks sardonically on the way back to the farm, the second time.

 

 

“I doubt it matters any more here than it did in London,” Miranda replies, reaching down to scratch between her daemon’s ears. But somehow, sitting in church, she finds herself missing Thomas more fiercely than she has in years. Mostly because she can imagine so vividly how he would whisper in her ear if he were there, how much he would disapprove of nearly everything that comes out of Pastor Lambrick’s mouth. She can picture the moment when he would lose patience and challenge the pastor outright - hopefully in the mingling after services, though if he were incensed enough, she knows Thomas would stand up right there in the middle of things, Leia flying circles over everyone’s head.

 

She lets the thought make her smile, and tries to focus on the memory of better times rather than the grief of it. She is tired of grief, and tired of every good memory being as tainted by it as the bad. At bottom, that is what her fight with James is all about, of course. For him, grief - and guilt, and anger - are fuel, while for her grief and loneliness have become poison, and what anger is left to her only makes her tired.

 

“Leia would be trying to convince Thomas to let her drop things on Pastor Lambrick’s head, and on half the congregation,” Arete says. “And he would probably let her, eventually. And she’d be trying to make me laugh, or… or get Mona to break her stubborn composure. We all know James and his Naval discipline would never break in public.”

 

 

Now there’s a thought she’s never really dared picture before - the three of them acting like the family they _had been_ , out in public where anyone could see. In London, of course, it had been impossible - and the only place it would be possible here is in Nassau proper, in a world where they were still fugitives. “If we had been warned, and ran together…” Miranda says to herself, then casts the thought aside. The could have beens don’t matter now.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

That first night, they're tossed in a cramped storeroom and left to shift for themselves. There's only one hammock, practically thrown at the humans' heads, and Irial isn't really surprised that Flint claims it. She glances at John, who shrugs and makes himself comfortable on a pile of sailcloth. Irial and her human can sleep anywhere they need to, and sailcloth is nothing compared to some of the things they've had to adjust to over the years.

 

 

John falls asleep easy as ever that night, and Irial's fairly sure Flint's asleep too. She feels lazy and relaxed, as she always does when John's asleep but she isn't yet. So when Mona's quiet voice comes out of the dark, Irial isn't startled. She feels John stirring, but he keeps quiet, so she pretends her human sleeps yet.

 

 

“Why is it that you shift? How old are you?”

 

 

That depends on how you count years for a date that doesn't always exist, Irial reflects, but all she says is, “I don't know why. Maybe because we no longer use the names we were given at birth, maybe for a hundred other reasons. I just... do.” She thinks of the first Irial then, when her own name was something else, remembers curling close with another daemon whose shape always matched their own, their humans tucked in a bed together and masses of dark curls mixing on their pillow.

 

 

They don't know if their other half is alive or dead, they will probably never know. And they don't know how to be whole, a true person on their own. In truth, Irial thinks that is why she can't settle, but she doesn't know Mona well enough to say so. Mona thinks her name is Emilia, after all.

 

 

“A lot of people change their names, and some of them even change their daemons' names,” Mona points out. “Especially as pirates, or the thieves you and your human were.”

 

 

“Did you change yours?” Irial asks.

 

 

“James did. I didn't.”

 

 

Mona walks closer and Irial goes to meet her, somehow preferring that to having this huge daemon so close to her human. They both lie on the floor, muzzles almost touching, and it should be tense yet somehow it just feels new, unfamiliar, but not bad, somehow. “Does my shifting bother you?” The only other pair who'd known it had been horrified by it, but remembering them now doesn't do any good.

 

 

“No, why should I be?” Mona asks. “It's certainly useful, for you and for James and I as long as you stick around.”

 

 

“You know that won't be long. Once we come back for the gold – ”

 

 

“Yes, I know that. Pity. We could take more warships together.”

 

 

“Somehow, I don't think your human or mine would like that.” Irial thinks Mona says something in reply, but John is falling asleep again, and this time, he pulls her under with him, so that she doesn't hear Flint's hissed complaint in the dark, or Mona's unruffled answer. Dimly, Irial thinks she feels a larger furred form settle close enough to warm her, but she's asleep before she can decide if it's real.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

They start the day as they have the last three days, James in the lone hammock tossed in after them and Mona lying next to the wall beside him. Silver's asleep yet when James wakes, curled up on a pile of spare sailcloth and seemingly entirely comfortable there. How he can sleep like that is beyond James, but it's not his concern anyway. His daemon is tucked in against him, sleeping in a cat form. This one, James hasn't ever seen before – some kind of wildcat, greyish-brown with large dark spots.

 

 

“Dufresne will want a hunt,” he says quietly. “If not today, tomorrow. Something simple, but he'll want the men to come back to Nassau with something.”

 

 

“And he'll want to prove he can do it, or he might see 'his' men vanish off to other crews once we're landside,” Mona agrees. “They followed him in the short term since no one else seemed to have any idea of what to do, but until recently he was just the bookkeeper, necessary to keep track of hauls but all but useless in a fight.” Until he'd suddenly and unexpectedly proved otherwise. But it wouldn't take much for them to start questioning if his recent capability was just luck, now running out.

 

 

Not much. But it would be delicate, they both knew that. And the suggestion of stealing the warship, the act of taking it, had been the first step in sowing that skepticism. And now, the next step is getting into Dufresne's head, make him too confident in himself – not hard, the little shit is already swanning about like a peacock, his genet daemon preening on his shoulder.

 

 

James and Mona leave the little storeroom, not noticing that the cat opens one eye, watching them go. James settles on a crate, Mona at his side, and they watch the crew beginning to go about their business, moving around them as if they are not there. It reminds him, suddenly, of being a boy on his first ship before Mona had even settled. It reminds him of formal events he'd been forced to attend as an officer, invisible in a crowd due to his low birth. He shakes off the thoughts, knowing there's no point in thinking about the past. He has a plan, and he needs to work at it.

 

 

And then there's the other little shit with his shifting daemon, proposing to help James get control of his crew back, an idiot thief who can't fight to save his life – literally – but has a daemon who can become a tiger and tear another daemon apart at need so he doesn't have to.

 

 

“And the moral of the story? Everybody needs a partner.”

 

 

He can hear Thomas' voice clear as day, can remember the soft amused sound Leia had made at the look on his face. And he truly must not think of them now, not when he cannot risk wavering even for a moment. He reaches for Mona, curling a hand in her fur until the grief is buried again, forced to return to the constant low ache rather than a stabbing pain.

 

 

And not a moment too soon, as a man and a fox come their way. Silver grabs a bucket and overturns it to sit on. James eyes him for a moment before he speaks. “You can walk away from all this if you wanted. The moment we arrive at Nassau, you're free to go anywhere you want. And yet you've offered to help me regain control of this crew. Why would you do that?”

 

 

“You mean aside from the share of gold I'd get out of it?”

 

 

“There are other ways of earning money, other crews.”

 

 

“I don't want to earn money. I don't want to join another crew. If we're being honest, I don't really want to be on this crew a day longer than is absolutely necessary.”

 

 

“Why not?”

 

 

“Because I don't want to be a pirate. I'm not interested in the life,” Silver says, and Flint can't help but notice how Silver is edging closer to him, voice going lower and more intent. Mona is watching the fox, and he can feel her leaning forward too like she wants to go over to the smaller daemon, like she thinks maybe the fox will say something the human won't.

 

 

“Not interested in the fighting, not interested in the ships. I don't care much for the sea while we're on the subject,” Silver continues, apparently oblivious. “But being a pirate on this crew for a little while longer, it offers me an opportunity I don't believe I can find anywhere else on Earth one big prize. And with it, freedom. From water, from Randall, from hunger, from wages, from _you_.”

 

 

For some reason that almost stings, and Mona growls softly. The fox, Emilia, twitches her ears and starts to move closer before her human's hand curls in her ruff and she goes still. Flint's eyes narrow, but he lets Silver finish his little speech.

 

 

“Just one question. In approximately two days' time, when we arrive back at Nassau, you and I will both be unceremoniously expelled from this ship. That would seem to be an impediment to your plan.”

 

 

“In less than two days, I intend to be a captain again. I suggest you find a way of earning your way back onto this crew as well.”

 

 

When James tells him that, he doesn't expect the idiot to think providing entertainment – and a punching bag – is a way of earning his place, but Silver spins some tale about an orphanage and one of the other boys there. James doesn't believe a word of it – or, he wouldn't, but something about the way the fox fidgets makes him wonder.

 

 

“Good luck with... whatever this is,” James says, skepticism heavy in his voice, before he and Mona leave them.

 

 

“It could work, we've seen stranger things,” Mona observes. “I like the stubbornness, and the creativity.”

 

 

“You heard him earlier – he plans to walk away as soon as he has his share of the gold. We can't afford to like them.”

 

 

“Oh, James,” Mona says in a familiar tone, exasperated and fond all at once. “Didn't you notice that for all John was rambling on, Emilia didn't look happy about it at all? That tells me Silver was trying to convince himself just as much as us with that little speech.”

 

 

“You think he's reliable?”

 

 

“No, not yet, but I think we shouldn't count them out.”

 

 

 <><><>

 

 

“Men in these waters are hard men. They don't fear ships.They don't fear guns. They don't fear swords.”

 

 

“Then what do they fear?”

 

 

Even later, when John is reading over his latest gleanings from Randall and planning how he's going to give his performance, he can't stop thinking about it. Can't stop thinking how Dufresne fell right into Flint's trap – he didn't see Flint talking to Dufresne but he knows, he just knows that Flint put the idea in Dufresne's head to take a prize, put it there knowing he'd fumble, because that flag is Captain Flint's flag, and without Flint it means nothing.

 

 

John knew that. He can vividly remember the fear on Parrish's ship once they knew just who was on them, but... But somehow he hadn't understood it, not really. Not until now, until he'd asked Flint what the “men on these waters” feared and he had just turned to look at him.

 

 

It should have terrified him. Instead, it had only left him breathless, to see that cool confidence and the easy calculation, the way Flint had so effortlessly regained control in the chaos. John is a man who coaxes chaos from order, to see someone who can play on minds at least as well as he can himself do the exact opposite is...

 

 

There is something in John that has always wanted to be seen, to be met and matched, and he hasn't known anyone who could do that in a very long time. “And it hardly counted then, Sol was a boy and Sibeal – ” Irial, echoing his thoughts, cuts off abruptly at that second name, as they always do. Perhaps one day they won't, but not today.

 

 

“We were children, and who knows what we would have been. But Flint...”

 

 

He should have been terrified, but he'd only _wanted_ – and that alone is alarming, because John doesn't _want_. Not like that. Oh, sure, he goes along with an offer when it's made, or when he's carried off to a brothel without warning, or it's useful for a con. It can be pleasant enough. But – but to – Well, trust him to find his long-elusive sense of desire waking at the sight of a man who can make an entire crew of men dance to his tune, and have most of them not even know he's done it. It's the kind of con John would love to pull off – that he's trying to pull off, in fact – and Flint had done it so easily. John tries to tell himself he's really only just impressed, but the only person he's not very good at lying to is himself.

 

 

“I'm not like this,” he says irritably to his daemon, and Irial says nothing. They cannot quite read each other's minds, so he doesn't know she's thinking about a much larger daemon curling round her in the night, and how nice it had felt, to have someone else there.

 

 

Mona’s back at dinner, which John hadn’t expected. Flint isn’t anywhere to be seen - neither is Dufresne, to give the men a chance to argue freely about their votes. But Mona is hidden behind the stove, her dark fur blending in with the shadows, murmuring advice to John as he tries to cook. She hasn’t done this before, and Flint had considered his work done after a few half-snarled lessons, but John’s grateful for the help.

 

 

Irial settles into the bit of space left near her with a soft yip of greeting. John tries not to think about it. Irial doesn’t do this sort of thing. John’s the friendly one, while his daemon is the aloof one, only speaking up from time to time in ways that unsettle people. Has she decided this should be part of her persona as Emilia, to go with John Silver the smiling cook? But no, Silver isn’t that different from his last few names and the people he’d become for them, so that can’t be it.

 

Maybe it’s just her way of thanking Mona for the help.

 

 

“Are you going to get yourself beaten half to a pulp again?” Mona asks, a sharp note to her voice.

 

 

“It’ll work, you know,” Irial says, amused. “You don’t have to worry.”

 

 

“I’m not worried. James and I simply don’t want you too damaged in case we have to steal another ship. Although you were more use than your human, Emilia, so maybe I should just make sure you don’t get damaged.”

 

 

“I take offense to that,” John murmurs. “I was right about the bosun’s whistle.”

 

 

“Yes, you were, but you’re also a complete incompetent in a fight. Can you at least shoot? I didn’t get a chance to notice before.”

 

 

“He can shoot,” Irial confirms, because Logan and Muldoon just came up with their bowls so John can’t answer. Logan scowls at him, but Muldoon’s expression is more thoughtful, which is odd given that he’d called John a cur just that morning. Jonh fingers the paper in his pocket, waiting for the noise to die down before he steps out from behind the counter again, stomping his foot. He’s trying something a little different tonight, mixing the stories with actual news - that they’re only two days out from Nassau, a reminder about the vote.

 

 

Only Dobbs ends up punching him this time. Mostly they just laugh, and partway through Joshua calls out a story of his own, about a crew member John doesn’t know who he assumes died or quit before he joined up. But it’s exactly how the boys reacted to Sol’s stories, after the first few times.

 

 

He can still see that sly glint in brown eyes, and if it makes something in him ache, he only has to remind himself that Sol would be tickled pink to see John using his tricks an ocean away on grown men who _ought_ to know better. Once the men make their way out to vote, John assumes he’ll be left to himself, but Muldoon comes back over. “Well? What’re you waiting for?”

 

 

“I’m sorry?” John asks, watching Muldoon’s otter watch him.

 

 

“Time to vote. I guess yours is obvious, but you’ve still gotta cast it.”

 

 

Only crew members get to vote. How about that.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“Really, James, there's no one here to be dramatic for except me,” Mona says, and James rolls his shoulders one last time to adjust the coat, then turns to his daemon with a sharp smile.

 

 

 

“Perfect fit,” he tells her, and he doesn't need to say how much he enjoyed that little scene with Dufresne, the horrified uncertainty in his eyes, the way his genet daemon had clung to his shoulder and kept her face hidden. Let the boy understand just how much he hadn't known. Maybe he'd take a lesson from it.

 

 

 

There's a faint scratching at the door, and James frowns, going to open it. Silver's daemon Irial trots in, looking them both over. “What are you doing here, and where's your human?” Mona asks, a faint laugh in her voice. James hasn't heard that tone from her since –

 

 

 

Since the day he'd returned from Nassau to London, that one night with Thomas and Leia before –

 

 

 

“I came to offer our congratulations to the reinstated captain,” Emilia says brightly. “John's in that storeroom still, no need to press our luck with the men's fists sleeping among them just yet. Hammocks are terrible things to make a quick escape from, you know.”

 

 

 

“You still shift, you can go a distance from your human... any more surprises, little one?” Mona asks, and James is left wondering what the hell is going on.

 

 

“Oh, there's always something new, isn't there?”

 

 

 

The day they make anchor, James skims the bookshelves, looking for something that will serve as an apology gift for Miranda. They're almost all in Spanish of course, and he remembers a rainy day in a townhouse study, Thomas' impassioned arguments lasting for hours, Miranda's dry amusement. Mona trembling under his hand at the sight of Eucleia on Arete's back, preening the fur between his ears. How they had looked together, lord and lady and their daemons, in that first moment he'd wanted -

 

 

 

He is just taking _La Galatea_ down from the shelf when stomping and cheers interrupt his thoughts. He goes upstairs in time to hear Silver explaining why it is they can't anchor within sight of the bay, a thing which should have been obvious. “Looks like his stupid plan worked,” Mona says, huffing her amusement.

 

 

 

“Oh, shut up,” James says, and goes back to his cabin in time to give Dufresne orders. Then he makes for shore with Silver, only to be brought up short by the sight of Hornigold's flag far from where it ought to be.

 

 

 

Somehow, it isn't even that much of a surprise to find that everything's gone to shit, and even less of one to find it's the fault of Charles Vane.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

Eleanor Guthrie and her jaguar remind them a little of the noble children they'd grown up around, the children with tigers and lions, wolves and bears, whose daemons had eventually settled as housecats and lapdogs, songbirds and sheep. Except, Miranda reflects, that Eleanor's Lys, as she calls him, is in his final form. Even so, there is something about Eleanor, a strange blend of confidence and trying too hard. Or, at least, trying too hard to hide that it takes effort to keep control.

 

 

James has told her about the unofficial queen of Nassau, of course, how she'd taken control when her father all but abandoned both his child and his organization. Yet, in spite of knowing the timeframe, she'd never quite thought of Eleanor Guthrie as being so young until she'd seen her for the first time. She must be in her mid-twenties by now, which isn't so young, but somehow she doesn't look like someone who can rule an island of pirates and other criminals.

 

 

But then, perhaps that's one reason why she's pulled it off. To be underestimated can be a very useful tool. Still, Miranda has to admit, she'd never expected the girl to visit. She begins with what is mostly sincere flattery – she really does find what Eleanor's done to be impressive, feels like she knows her. She makes tea while Eleanor stands with her back turned, staring at the tarnished mirror on the wall. Her jaguar sits motionless at her side while Arete stands by the fireplace, and they watch each other.

 

 

“Do you know what he told me about you?” Eleanor asks, finally turning around.

 

 

“What's that?”

 

 

“Nothing. When I ask him, all I get is a shrug or a laugh or an innocent suggestion that he has a longtime companion. Her name is Barlow and nothing more. Is that possible? Is it possible that you're so unremarkable as to resist any further description than that?”

 

 

“Certainly possible,” Miranda says lightly, and honestly, if Eleanor thinks that will be enough to wound her, then in some ways at least she really is as young as she looks.

 

 

“You conspire with my father to sabotage our plans,” Eleanor continues, circling Miranda with her daemon trailing her, both of them suddenly looking very alike. But only the jaguar is at ease; Eleanor is angry but there's something brittle about it, something that suggests she's worried.

 

 

 

“You betray our trust. You cause almost irreparable damage as a result. And when Flint, the most feared captain in all creation, comes to confront you about it, _you_ destroy _him_. Now I hear in the wind that in his absence you've begun to forge new alliances with his enemies. With the farmers of the interior. With Mr. Underhill, the man sheltering my shit of a father as we speak.”

 

 

“It's true I've joined Pastor Lambrick's congregation and that Mr. Underhill is a member,” Miranda concedes. Really, forging alliances? It hasn't been anything so complicated – well, not yet, at least. If need be she can probably make more of it soon.

 

 

 

“Yet here you sit, brewing tea as if none of it ever happened. And I'm forced to wonder exactly what it is you hold over Flint that makes everything I've seen possible.”

 

 

 

“You don't know what you've seen,” Miranda says, and she is suddenly out of patience with this girl who doesn't understand the man she calls the most feared captain, not at all. She only thinks she does.

 

 

“You didn't betray him?”

 

 

“I don't believe I did, no,” Miranda says, and it's mostly honest, looking across her table at Eleanor. “And if he's being honest, neither does he.”

 

 

“I'm sorry. I saw the look on his face the last night he left this place and I beg to differ.”

 

 

“Every man has his torments. Demons born of past wrongs that hound and harass him. You perceive the effects of Captain Flint's demons. Echoes of their voices. But I know their names. I was there when they were born. I know the things they whisper to him at night.” _I know them because I hear them too, because we have both come through the fire together_ , she thinks but doesn't say. “So you can believe me when I tell you that within his chorus of torments none of them look or sound like me.”

 

 

“I don't know what it is that you owe Flint or that he owes you,” Eleanor says, getting to her feet. “But after the damage you've caused, I know what you owe me and I've come here to collect. I need to speak with Underhill. As a result of your actions, my business interests are now vulnerable. Acquiring the partnership of a plantation the size of Mr. Underhill's could help bolster commerce on my side of the island. My attempts to reach him by letter have gone unanswered. And considering your new friendship, I would like for you to help arrange a meeting.

 

 

“I thought he was an enemy of yours.” Miranda leans back in her chair, somehow annoyed and amused and even a little impressed in spite of herself. But the one thing she is not is intimidated, even as Eleanor does her best to loom over her.

 

 

 

“Perhaps I'm willing to see things in a different light. Will you do it?

 

 

 

“I'll try.”

 

 

 

When Eleanor leaves, Miranda looks over at Arete. “Well, this is certainly becoming quite a complicated little mess, isn't it?”

 

 

 

“Are you actually going to talk to Underhill for her?”

 

 

 

Miranda sets her cup down. “You know, I just might. It could be useful, being an ambassador for Ms. Guthrie. She has as much diplomatic skill as James, clearly, so she'll need one.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

Less flour and more rum. Well, John figures he's followed worse orders in his life.

 

 

John and Irial both see them at the same time, the dark-haired man loading barrels and the lynx daemon at his side. They both recognize him even in profile, even after eighteen years, and go still, hoping against hope that they just won't be noticed.

 

 

Of course, they are, but John takes off, fleeing through the streets of Nassau with Irial racing along at his side. A voice echoes after him shouting names that don't belong to them anymore but he ignores it. Finally, they stop, John taking the time to compose himself. He has to get the rest of the supplies, he has to report to Flint, and he doesn’t want his captain - no, _the_ captain, Flint isn’t his, what a silly thing to think - to have any questions.

 

 

And so, they get the supplies, they report – and Flint tells him to dump everything he bought to make the crew angrier. John isn't exactly keen on this idea, but to an extent, he complies. He does bring back some of it, because they need to be angry, not unfed and so miserable they won't cooperate with anything. He's holding to his theory of looking at them a lot like children, and he knows what children will stay through, and not run, if they have something in their bellies and somewhere to sleep at night.

 

 

“I had to sneak it by several of Vane's men, in case you're wondering why the food's shoved in a coffin and the rum barrels have poison symbols on them,” he tells Dufresne with a straight face when he gets back. Though he hates pure rum, he downs a mug of it to prove it really is rum and not poison, and it relaxes him just enough to laughingly tell the story of just how he procured the coffin. Luckily, he isn't drunk, so he's able to edit a story that's actually from an incident in Toledo three years ago. It did involve stealing a coffin, though.

 

 

“I thought I told you not to bring the supplies back,” Flint says the next morning, and John shrugs.

 

 

“I told a tale of my hardships in getting it here, that seemed to do the trick well enough. You want them mad at Vane, Captain, not unwilling to cooperate with you. Given that you've only recently regained your position after a mutiny, don't you think you need them to be in a decent mood with you?”

 

 

Dufresne comes in then, followed by DeGroot. Hornigold and Mr. Scott join them within moments. No one seems to notice when John drifts to the window seat instead of leaving, Irial curled in his lap. No one but Mona, anyway, who lies down by the window herself as if to give her seal of approval to their presence.

 

 

Flint's concerned about the risk to Nassau in destroying the fort, which is interesting, especially when Hornigold – who most people would probably think of as the more decent, more sensible one – clearly doesn't give a shit. Ten weeks just to repair the batteries with both the English and Spanish having good reason to come in guns blazing is not really that small a window. Yet Hornigold is dismissive, while Flint... Flint is committed to being rid of Vane, but it's clear that he isn't happy with the methods he has to use.

 

 

 

Well, Hornigold's a typical English Jacobite, John thinks – he's heard Hornigold was a supporter of the deposed King James, that's how he landed here. All fire and fury, and then running off to France and leaving the Scots Highlanders and the Irish fucked. And John Silver has _no reason_ to think like that, just because he saw a ghost from a lost boy's past. It was probably half a lie even when the lost boy grew up hearing it, anyway.

 

 

 

“Give us the room,” Flint says when Eleanor shows up, and so they do. Even John, this time, careful not to step on Mona as he hops down. He finds an empty corner of deck, thinking about the man and the lynx in that alley, in spite of himself. He remembers a boy and a girl turning their backs, always turning their backs, in cramped rooms over a tavern, in a dark street that last night. He remembers, and then he goes down to the mess to make lunch, because there's no fucking point to this.

 

 

All it means is there's one more reason to get the fuck off Nassau as soon as the gold's in his pocket.

 

 

 

There's a second meeting, and again John tucks himself in the corner and listens. “I'll go to the beach,” Flint claims, but John knows that actually means him. What he doesn't expect is for Flint to ask his opinion. So John sits, and keeps Irial firmly in his lap as he starts going on about how it comes down to fear of Vane versus fear that Flint is worse.

 

 

And for a moment, just for a moment, when Flint studies him with a look in his river-green eyes that’s almost soft, and asks if John sees him as a villain, John wants to say that to his own surprise he doesn't. He wants to relax and take this odd warmth that seems to be on offer. Irial strains against where he’s holding her in his lap, wanting to go to where Mona is lazing by the hammock. But John won’t let her. Not now. Not with the lost boy crying in the back of his mind again. He won’t let himself relax in the face of Flint’s almost fond half-smile.

 

 

He lashes out instead, because it’s not real. And even if it is, it won’t last, it never does. That’s why he wants the gold. Gold is reliable, gold is solid, it’s his road to freedom and it’s so much more trustworthy than eyes the color of the rivers he hasn't seen in sixteen years, in a place someone else called home. There is no such thing as home for John Silver and his Emilia, after all.

 

 

“It must be awful being you,” he says, when he realizes Flint doesn't want to be the villain, that he was actually hoping John would say he isn't. _You're not_ , says the lost boy deep in John's mind, but he won't say that. Irial is shaking with her own anger at her human's lies, but she is silent.

 

 

It doesn’t hurt to see Flint’s expression close down again, fury in his eyes. It doesn’t hurt at all, and John doesn’t miss the softness, not one bit.

 

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“You like them, huh?” James says when John and Emilia are gone. He wants to hit something. Going off Mona’s judgment, he’d let the little shit in, just a bit - and had it thrown in his teeth. The worst part of it is, Silver’s right. James does hate that he’s seen as the villain here, it makes him sick. He’s trying to achieve for Nassau what Thomas wanted for it, and playing the villain to do so feels like an insult to his love’s memory.

 

 

_He hates it._

 

 

“Irial kept looking at me, and I think she wanted to come over, so he was just being a brat for some reason. But whatever you say, James.” Mona sighs, scratching her neck. “We don’t have time to go inland again, do we? I miss Arete, I don’t like how we left things, your note in a book aside.”

 

 

“I don’t either,” James says heavily, twisting the ring he wears on his pinky. It’s a signet ring - it’s _Thomas’_ signet ring, one that came back from the jeweler’s the wrong size but by chance happened to fit James’ hand. He doesn’t remember taking it from the desk – that day. But he’d found it in his coat pocket three days into the voyage to Nassau, and hasn’t taken it off since. “But no, we don’t have time. And anyway - they looked happy enough. I don’t think a visit from a notorious pirate captain will help Mrs. Barlow’s reputation with the locals, do you?”

 

 

He tries to laugh, and almost chokes on it.

 

 

“They - would they do better without us? Would they be happier?” Mona asks quietly.

 

 

“I don’t think they’d admit it if it’s so,” James says heavily, slumping in his chair. God, but he’s tired. He is so tired. Mona walks over to him, laying her head in his lap. James strokes her thick fur, and there’s some comfort in it. “But there’s times I think they probably would be. I’m just that little bit too selfish to let them go, and too afraid of what could happen if we - we have to take care of each other.”

 

 

Because for ten years, they have been all the other had. So for their own sakes, and because it’s the last thing Thomas asked of them, they stay together. And James - he loved Miranda first, he still does love her, he isn’t even sure where things… Even here, in the early days, they weren’t happy but things were better when they were together. Now they aren’t, and he doesn’t know how to fix that.

 

 

“I can’t afford to think about this right now,” James says, undoing the tie holding back his hair in hopes that it will ease his growing headache. “I’ve got an attack to plan. We both know Vane won’t back down, which means I have to destroy Nassau’s most important line of defense. Eleanor does have a point there.”

 

 

“If only we could just send someone to kill the bastard,” Mona agrees. “With the gold, we should be able to hire people to repair it. Maybe even pay plantation owners for the use of their laborers - if we hire indentures, they’ll likely jump at it. They can use the gold to shorten the terms of their contracts, I should think. Or we could hunt a slaver or two, promise the slaves freedom in exchange for fixing our fort. We can make this work, James.”

 

 

“If we get the time,” James mutters. “And we’re already running out of that. The Scarborough is too damn close, not to mention the Spanish.”

 

 

“We’ll think of something. We always do.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

Eating houses are good places to spread gossip, so John pops into all of the ones in Nassau, chatting here and there. The one closest to the edge of town is, so he hears, frequented by the smaller crews, those who try to stay out of the power games of Nassau. So if John can get even them talking...

 

 

It's the same here as everywhere else, of course. A few words here and there, just enough to get the gossip started. John knows how whispers start all too well. For a moment he sees a tavern on a very different island. One man runs the bar, the other wanders among the tables. A smile, a casual word, a free drink. A raven on her human's shoulder, a scruffy wildcat lazing at the corner of the bar in easy reach of her human's hand.

 

 

Irial takes the form of an ocelot here, and John has his hair twisted into a knot at the nape of his neck. He's found a red jacket – it doesn't fit him right, so he won't be keeping it, but he lifted it off a stall on the way here. Every place he stops, he changes something about his appearance, but in truth Irial is the key. No one will think they saw the same person if the daemons don't match.

 

 

Things like this always go better if no one can say for sure that it all began with one person.

 

 

After leaving, they duck behind a building and, making sure no one's in sight, Irial turns back into a fox. “It's not as easy as it was. Since coming here... It's starting to take some effort to shift.”

 

 

“All the more reason to get out of here the moment the gold's in hand,” John says, yanking the tie from his hair.

 

 

“You want me to stay like this?!” Irial cries. “You want me to never -”

 

 

John drops to his knees, pulling Irial against his chest and cuddling her. “No, no, of course I don't. You have to admit it's useful though, you being able to shift.”

 

 

“So you do want it!” Irial bites his neck, even though it hurts her too. John grits his teeth against a yelp of pain, holding tighter when his daemon would wriggle free. He doesn't want that, does he? He doesn't know, really.

 

 

“It isn't – I'm afraid, Iri. The life we lead, we need every advantage. We haven't got many, and I – ”

 

 

There's a group gathered in a circle around something John can't see, and he lets Iri go. “We should go see what that's about,” he says woodenly, getting properly to his feet. He shrugs off the red jacket and leaves it in a heap, striding over like a man without a care in the world.

 

 

“The fuck's going on in there?” John asks the first man he comes up beside. The man's parrot daemon clacks her beak as her human looks over.

 

 

“Pulled a man out of the water. Up by the north point.”

 

 

“That's lucky,” Irial says before John can, mostly for the pleasure of seeing the man jump a little at being addressed by a stranger's daemon.

 

 

“We were just about to send for one of you,” says the parrot with clear disapproval at Irial's rudeness. Which means, of course, that John is the one who answers.

 

 

“Excuse me?”

 

 

“You're a Walrus man, aren't you?” The man picks it up again, his daemon shifting irritably from foot to foot.

 

 

“Sorry, what are you talking about?” John says, and then he spots the wolfhound daemon, and a moment later the human she belongs to. Oh. Well, that is problematic, isn't it?

 

 

“He's one of yours,” says the parrot, but John isn't listening anymore.

 

 

Which is how John finds himself tucked away in a shed with a complaining Randall and an unconscious Billy Bones. He's not exactly happy about it, because he'd much rather be on the warship at dawn tomorrow than in _another_ town under siege, but there's nothing to be done. He'd shackled Billy, yes, and his daemon too – well, Irial had done that, shifting a monkey that had the same fur pattern as her fox form to have the hands to do it. But he's not exactly sure it will hold them.

 

 

When Billy wakes up and asks for Gates, well, John isn't exactly surprised.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

She finds the book in the morning, and realizes James must have come while some of the settlers were here, with two girls who wanted music lessons. “I thought I caught Mona's scent,” Arete says. “They should have come in.”

 

 

“With nice Puritans about? Not likely,” Miranda says dryly, and then they go about their day, which is once again interrupted by Eleanor Guthrie.

 

“He's moving in a direction that promises unimaginable chaos. He won't listen to me, but perhaps he would listen to an appeal from you.” This time, Eleanor is a lot less combative, and much more sincere. Miranda can tell she's genuinely worried, all the more so from her pacing daemon, but she doesn't see why Eleanor is here.

 

 

“I appreciate your frustration. Were there something I could do to help, I assure you I would.”

 

 

“You can make him see how destructive his actions would be. You can make him -” God, she looks so damned young suddenly, in a way even her obvious intimidation tactics hadn't. Someone who still believes she can change the world if she just wills it hard enough. Miranda finds herself hoping that Eleanor Guthrie's more ruthless side prevents her from ending the way the last person she'd known like that had.

 

 

She wonders if that one shared trait is why James likes her so much, the trait he now shares, but that he'd picked up from – She pushes that thought aside to cut Eleanor off.

 

 

 

“If you believe if you believe anyone can make him see anything, you must not know him very well at all. I'm sorry. I can't help you, “Miranda says, going to get up, but Eleanor grabs her wrist.

 

 

 

“You weren't here the last time they came. They burned the huts on the beach and then the structures in town. When the whole of Nassau was a smoking wreck, they turned their eye inland. They raped, they murdered, they laid waste. And all because there was no fort to protect the bay. The men in charge had allowed it to fall into disrepair. Please, help me to dissuade him from putting us on that path again.”

 

 

James had told her about Eleanor's childhood, how her mother had died in the Rosario raids and her former second in command, a slave by the name of Mr. Scott, lost his wife and daughter. The daughter had been Eleanor's only companion of a similar age. “If you're concerned for your safety, perhaps you should request sanctuary along with your father at the Underhill estate. I'd be happy to carry the message.”

 

 

“You think this is about me?”

 

 

“You asked me for my help yesterday with Mr. Underhill. I gave it my best efforts. You asked me today again for my help, but I'm sorry, what you ask is simply impossible.”

 

 

“You don't give a shit about the rest of us, fine. But Flint. Don't you care enough about him to at least try to stop him from doing this?”

 

 

“Don't I care about him?” She's honestly stunned. That _cannot_ be what she just said. Beside her Arete hisses, and when the jaguar growls he only bares his teeth, refusing to be cowed by a larger cat.

 

 

 

“He's the one in the most immediate danger. And you would do nothing – !”

 

 

 

“You who have enabled him, encouraged his violence, _you_ ask if I care about him?” Miranda whirls on her, and God, it feels good to have someone to turn her anger on that she doesn't care about so much it hurts. Even if she knows James is set on this path and would be even without this girl in front of her. “How dare you? Get out of my house.”

 

 

 

She storms out and slams the door behind her.

 

 

 

All in all, Miranda is in no mood to deal with Pastor Lambrick. But what she'd told Eleanor was true; if she could help she would. So when the pastor with his rodent daemon in his pocket starts ranting about all the ways she's proven she's still a sinner – and he'd honestly convinced himself that his fucking her on her porch railing would return her to some kind of grace? That is a new one – at first she is barely listening.

 

 

 

But then he mentions the girl. The daughter of the Carolina governor. And she pictures a tiny five-year-old called Abby, her bright brown eyes and shy smile. And she thinks, maybe there is something she can do after all.

 

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“Silver and Emilia never came back,” she says, resting her head against his hip. James reaches down, scratching between his daemon’s ears.

 

 

“They could be doing anything, and I can’t waste time worrying about it.” Yet he is, somehow, still concerned. He isn’t sure why, but he feels as if there’s something he’s missing. Maybe the little shit decided to cut and run without the gold, but James doesn’t really think that’s it. He supposes he’ll find out eventually.

 

 

“ I don’t like it, James. Any more than I like the fact that we didn’t warn Miranda about what we were planning to do. Apparently Eleanor told her, which is another problem - she knows where Miranda and Arete are. Vane could snatch John and Lia for information, he could take Miranda and Arete for leverage if Eleanor decides it’s worth telling him -”

 

 

“She wouldn’t,” James cuts her off. He isn’t actually certain of that, and the way Arete looks up at him makes it very clear that she knows it. As for Silver… “None of that is going to happen, because we’re going to shoot him out of that fucking fort before he has a chance. Vane’s an idiot to his pride, and as territorial as his jaguar daemon suggests. He won’t leave the fort, and with any luck, he’ll die as it crumbles around him. And since _when_ did you have a nickname for the fox anyway?”

 

 

“I like the fox. And her curly thief of a human. All right then. Let’s get this over with. I know you’re right about Miranda - if he was going to do it he would have, but I worry about what he’ll do if he survives the fort, James. Vane doesn’t do well when cornered, clearly. Eleanor left him so, and he came back with a bunch of bully boys from who knows where and took the damn fort.”

 

 

She’s right. James knows she’s right. And Mona - she’s half wolf and half dog, like the huge stray back in Padstow when he’d been a child. The stray had been grey and not black, and had only liked certain people. But those people, like the boy James had been, he would defend to his last breath. He can still remember how the giant dog had growled the day he left with Hennessey, Mona a cat curled up in James’ arms, as if he’d known… But the point is, wolves and dogs alike guard what is theirs, and Mona is no exception. Just, sometimes, what she thinks belongs to them and what he thinks belongs to them, or the best way to defend those things and people, doesn’t always quite _match_.

 

 

The trouble is, wolves, dogs, and men like James are also _territorial_ , every bit as much as pairs like Vane and his jaguar. James can’t suffer Vane to have a chokehold on the island part of him has always felt is his. He can’t risk bringing the gold back when Vane controls the fort; he might want to break Hornigold’s face on his fist from time to time, but the ex-Jacobite captain is at least a rational actor in a way Vane is not. Hornigold can be negotiated with.

 

 

So, there really is only one option, even if the risk of leaving Nassau defenseless in the aftermath makes him want to grind his teeth.

 

 

He finds himself at the rail with Scott as the sky begins to lighten, talking of Nassau. And so James asks this man who has been the power behind two thrones what he would do, and he listens half in spite of himself.

 

 

“You're as invested in the future of this place as any,” James says, not turning to look at Scott but honest in wanting the answer. This man who has been here longer than any of them, who, as he himself has just said, has been a power behind two thrones, and for now at least stands with Hornigold. Flint suspects that won't last, but he wonders where Scott will go next. So he asks him what he would do, knowing the words have the weight of experience behind them. And he can't say there isn't

 

James thinks of Hornigold, his estimate of ten weeks just to repair the batteries. Thinks of everything Eleanor said, thinks of the Scarborough lurking and the threat of Spanish retaliation. He thinks of a thief and his fox on that island somewhere, meant to be turning the tide in his favor but who never came back to report. He thinks of Miranda inland, he -

 

 

He pushes the thoughts aside, listening to the advice he asked for, that he wishes part of him didn't agree with.

 

 

“The world changes. It is inevitable. Perhaps the only thing that is inevitable. If it were me facing this decision, I would make peace with that. I would teach myself to see Captain Vane as an unfortunate but unavoidable change in our landscape. And I would ensure that we all live to see the sunrise again tomorrow. Were it me.”

 

 

Scott falls quiet after that, and James says nothing, Mona a comforting weight at his side.

 

 

“The sun is rising,” Scott’s bird daemon says, her rich voice almost a shock to James. She rarely talks, and he’s never been able to place what kind of bird she is - some kind of crow, he thinks, but the white marks on her neck throw him off - but her voice carries an accent heavier by far than her human’s. Mona says she hears the bird talking to her human sometimes, and it’s never in English, so he supposes that must be why.

 

 

“I should get back to Hornigold,” Scott says, and then he’s gone, leaving James alone with Mona at the rail.

 

 

James walks down to the main deck heavily, the Spanish coat a weight on his shoulders. Hornigold is watching him, his lizard daemon motionless on his shoulder.

 

 

“What say you, Captain?” Hornigold asks.

 

 

James takes one breath, then another. There is, as he'd told Eleanor, as he'd thought earlier, only one choice. “Fire.”

 


	2. We Have The Past To Bury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Flint's fort attack doesn't go as planned, a dead man isn't dead after all, Miranda Barlow leaves the farm and John Silver has a run-in with his backstory.
> 
> Also, John Silver and Miranda Barlow meet. The jury's out on how well they're going to get along.

“I can assure you, Mr. Gates' death is not one the captain took lightly. When I arrived just after the deed was done, I saw the look on his face. The pain it caused him to do what he did. But in that moment, he believed it necessary to preserve the hunt for the Urca and her gold,” John says, pacing the meat shed as he does so, only looking at Billy partway through. Poor man looks terrible.

 

 

“Flint killed him?”

 

 

“Yes,” John says, taking a seat on the stool. Randall and his cat are slumped in the corner, while Irial is in tiger form, guarding Billy's wolfhound. John's not exactly thrilled about this – Flint knowing is one thing, because he suspects Flint doesn't give a fuck either way about anything that's not directly related to his goals. Randall is even less likely to care and even if he's nowhere near as dim as he pretends to be, the fact that he pretends to be means he and his cat can't tell anyone either. But for Billy to know that his daemon is unsettled...

 

 

Well, there's nothing for it, that's all.

 

 

“And he's still captain? How?” Billy asks, with something very like horror in his eyes, though his sunburnt face seems almost frozen, his features oddly stiff.

 

 

“After a brief interlude, the men saw what I am hoping you will see,” John explains. “That with the gold still sitting on that beach, he represents our best, perhaps our only chance of retrieving it. Once this business with Vane and the fort is over, that is what the rest of us intend.”

 

 

“Rest of us? That's why I'm here. You didn't want me with the men. You're worried I'll challenge Flint.”

 

 

“Well, the thought crossed my mind,” John admits. No point in lying about this one, really. “But I'm hoping that once you have a moment to process all of this, you'll remember that you are the same man who when handed a blank page pulled from Mr. Singleton's corpse, stood by the captain for the sake of the bigger picture. Then you'll realize you were right then. And the same kind of perspective is what's called for now.”

 

 

“Enough!” Even knowing he's shackled, even though Billy is still weak enough that his lunge isn't much of a threat, John jerks back in spite of himself. “I'm going to see my brothers now.”

 

 

That, of course, is when Billy notices the shackle on his ankle. John gives him an almost sheepish look in response.

 

 

“Until I know what you're going to say to the men, I can't let you say anything to the men.”

 

 

The wolfhound growls and makes to leap – Irial cuts her off with a snarl, and then of course she discovers her own shackle. “How long do you really think you can keep us?” the hound snaps, hackles still raised.

 

 

Irial kneads her claws in the dirt. “Well, no one on the crew knows you're alive, and by the time anyone who might have recognized you can tell one of them, the immediate danger will be over, so it shouldn't matter very much.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

James is in the first longboat to reach shore, already half on his feet so that he and Mona can hit the beach immediately. The men are setting up, and he looks to Dufresne, ignoring the low grumbling of the man's genet daemon. “Find Mr. Silver for me, if you please,” he orders.

 

 

“Captain,” Dufresne says and leaves. James turns to Hornigold, whose lizard is looking more lively on his shoulder than Flint can ever recall seeing.

 

 

“You've explained to your men their responsibilities here?”

 

 

Aye, they know your plans to recover the gold must be kept secret and silent,” Hornigold says as they fall into step together, easier than James might have expected. “If it were to be discovered by another crew, they could become competition for its retrieval.”

 

 

“You know how to keep a secret between three men?” James says, his voice very dry.

 

 

“Shoot two of them,” Hornigold replies, sounding reluctant, but they both know the old saying to be true more often than not. That's how it became an old saying, most likely.

 

 

“What kind of fool tries to keep a secret amongst 100?”

 

 

“The faster we retake the fort, the faster you'll be back on the water en route to the Urca with my men in your service. Even if the information were to be divulged that the gold is still to be won, even if another crew could discern its specific location, even if they could refit rapidly enough to get out there ahead of you, they'd still be facing a warship standing between them and their prize. Adhere to our plan, you will have your gold and I'll have my fort.”

 

 

The fort is Hornigold's only concern. James knows this. He's a prideful man but he suspects Benjamin Hornigold might have even more of a certain kind of pride than he does. Gates had said, and James recalled hearing the name, that Hornigold was once a Navy man of good reputation and decent birth – gentry, not nobility, but still far better than most of the men who ended up on Nassau, far better than Lieutenant James McGraw could ever have claimed. James is just reflecting that it shows in the man's fixation on possessing the fort when Mona yips and races forward at the sight of –

 

 

Miranda and Arete? Hornigold, the men preparing for attack, the still-missing Silver, even Vane in the fort, all are forgotten as James races over to Miranda and Arete in the wake of his daemon. “What are you doing here?” he says in an undertone.

 

 

“I need to speak with you alone.”

 

 

“You need to leave here _right now_. I will see you when I am able.” She can't be here. Not here. He remembers Mona's concern about Eleanor divulging Miranda's location to Vane. With her here, she could get caught in the crossfire, she could get snatched up. She cannot be here. He starts to turn, hoping she's gotten his point, but she stops him.

 

 

“I have come upon some information which changes things for you. You must not move against that fort.”

 

 

“Miranda, you don't understand what's going on.”

 

 

 

Arete's low snarl is a sign that he's pushing things, but he can't make himself care in this moment, not when there is too much happening at once and they aren't safe here.

 

 

 

“I understand why you need that fort. I understand why you need that gold. I understand why you need this island. I understand it all because I was there the day our lives ended and all of this began.” He has to look back at her then, even though the need to watch everything around them, to be on guard, is almost overwhelming. Mona is watching, he knows, and Arete will be too.

 

 

 

“But I have been devoted to you since that day,” Miranda says, with an intensity he hasn't seen from her since the day she speaks of, and that is all the more unsettling today for the control now, the control that was not present then. _I am enraged,_ she had said that night, and that fire is back in her eyes now. Miranda reminds him of himself, and it scares him. It makes him listen.

 

 

“I have been loyal and protective and _fucking_ committed to you since that day, and I am asking you to come with me so that I can save your life.”

 

 

He looks around one last time, but it's useless now, memories crashing in again so that all he can see is that last day in London, that morning that was the three of them for the last time, how he'd left his lord and lady while they were still rumpled and half-dressed with a promise that talking to Hennessey would fix everything, and – and –

 

 

And he follows Miranda, because what else can he do?

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“Perhaps it would help if we went back to the beginning?” John says, trying for patience. “You said you were captured by the navy. You said you escaped their custody, made your way back here, but you didn't mention the means by which you managed that escape.”

 

 

“Why are you here?”

 

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

 

“Why are you the one here defending him?” Billy's improved even as the morning's worn on, sitting up and looking more awake, his wolfhound's head in his lap. Irial's swapped forms again, although not for the fox shape that is officially John Silver's Emilia. No, she's chosen her favorite of her cat shapes, a grey and brown wild cat they saw only once, in a marketplace stall in Amsterdam selling exotic pets from the Orient. Some kind of mountain cat called a clouded leopard. It's Iri's favorite sleeping form, though lately she's grown fond of the spotted wildcats that look like tiny jaguars or leopards that are native to this part of the world.

 

 

He supposes she's become it now because she can't pace very well in here as a tiger, and he knows she finds it easiest to shift from one cat to another. That second of extra speed will come in handy if she must become a tiger again to subdue the hound.

 

 

“Oh, yes. I suppose it must come as some surprise given the state of things when last we saw each other,” John admits. “But it's become clear to me that a crew requires two men to function. One to tell them what to do and another to tell them why they should want to do it. In Mr. Gates' absence, the latter role was unfilled. And I thought I could fill it.” He shrugs a little, giving Billy a look somewhere between careless and innocent. It's not quite a con, Billy's too wary for that, but close enough.

 

 

“How the fuck did you manage that?” Billy asks, eyes narrowed. His daemon growls low in her throat, and Irial hisses softly in warning. Randall's cat makes a chirping sound as if she finds all of this funny, while Randall himself seems entirely focused on shucking corn.

 

 

What a strange collection, John muses, before shaking off the idle thoughts and answering Billy. “I tried to tell you once, I'm a hard man not to like. And at the end of the day, and all else being equal, liked is just as good as feared.”

 

 

Billy gives him a skeptical look, then glances over at Randall, who looks up as John turns to look as well. “We like him,” he says in that vacant way of his, and John allows himself a slight smile and huff of laughter before he looks back to Billy, who is staring at him as if he thinks John might be a little mad.

 

 

“You thought Flint killed both me and Gates and then you queued up to be the next to fill the post. I don't know if you're either very dangerous or very stupid.”

 

 

“Or just insane,” the wolfhound chimes in.

 

 

“Or that,” Billy agrees, scratching between her ears. Irial chuffs in amusement.

 

 

“We might be, but not how you mean,” she says lazily, resting her head against John's thigh. John, for his part, rolls his eyes.

 

 

“Possibly a bit of all those things. But I am certain I will avoid the mistake you both made. I don't believe in him. To me, he is a means of securing a very valuable prize. No more, no less.” If part of him has a less pragmatic interest than that, John ignores it ruthlessly. He hasn't got time to dwell, he needs to know what Billy is going to do, and he says as much.

 

 

“Which is why I need to know when asked by the men, what will you tell them happened on the bow of the Walrus that night? How did you end up in the water?” He watches Billy's face, not looking away, and if part of him is almost unconsciously mimicking the way Flint had watched him in the cabin yesterday, he doesn't notice. Irial does, but she'd never mention it.

 

 

“You keep focusing on how I went in. Perhaps you should be more worried about the thing that took me out,” Billy says, his voice slow and irritated, almost snide. John doesn't like the sound of that, not one bit. He doesn't care about Billy's tone that much, but what he's implying means the stakes are going up again, and there's only so many times that can happen before everything crumbles.

 

 

“I can see how the men could've been taken in by you with what they've been through. But know this had I been here, I doubt it would have been this easy for you,” Billy continues, with a low growl in his voice that's very like his daemon, and a wild sort of anger growing in his eyes. “Sooner or later, you need to release me. You have no choice. And the longer you delay, the more likely I might choose to take it personally.”

 

 

“I would say I have some choice,” John says, keeping his voice even and calm.

 

 

“Not while he's here you don't,” Billy says, nodding toward Randall.

 

 

”We like him, too,” Randall says, and John's lips twist. Son of a fucking bitch. He can hear Irial muttering in Irish – that particular curse doesn't translate right to English, but he very much agrees with the sentiment of it. With an annoyed huff, he reaches into the seed barrow for the key he'd hidden, and slides the key into Billy's shackle, leaving Billy to turn it and then free his daemon.

 

 

“Come on, Morgaine,” Billy tells his hound, and then he's limping off, his hand on his daemon's back.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

He isn't expecting Miranda to bring him to Eleanor's tavern, but he supposes it's not that much of a surprise. When he reaches the doorway, the two of them are talking quietly, Arete and Eleanor's Lysander circling each other with careful wariness. James stops for a moment before following Miranda, wondering if he should say something, but the look in Eleanor's eyes tells him she won't listen to anything. Out of the corner of his eye he spots Richard Guthrie coming down the stairs, and that explains everything.

 

 

The parlor is dim, and for long moments there's nothing but silence. Miranda sits, hands clasped but fidgety in the way she gets when she's trying to compose herself. Arete won't keep still, pacing back and forth under the shuttered window as Miranda takes a deep breath and James leans on a chair, Mona's head resting against his hip to anchor him.

 

 

“While you were gone, Captain Vane and his men slaughtered another pirate crew in the bay,” Miranda begins. “There are whispers it was to avenge an offense against Eleanor Guthrie. There are also whispers that it was to steal a hostage being held by that crew. A girl who is now held in that fort. A girl who would be in harm's way if you were to launch your attack.”

 

 

“You pulled me away from my men out of concern for a girl?” James asks, exasperated, but before he can say more Miranda cuts him off.

 

 

“The girl's name is Abigail Ashe,” she says, watching him carefully.

 

 

Mona yips in surprise, and James' eyes narrow. Of all the coincidences... “Peter's daughter?” He dimly remembers Peter talking about the girl from time to time, something about piano lessons and dancing something or other, but he still can't see where Miranda's going with this. Of course she's concerned for the girl, he remembers Peter only brought her up when Miranda asked, she'd clearly been fond of her, but...

 

 

“You need to obtain her from Captain Vane. Alive and unharmed. And you need to return her to Carolina, to her father.”

 

 

“I understand you have feelings over the girl's welfare, however -”

 

 

“And when you return her, you're going to explain to Peter what it is you are trying to accomplish here. A Nassau that can self-govern, pardons for your men, and a stake in their own future. What you want. What Thomas wanted. What we all wanted. And he is going to help you achieve it.”

 

 

“He's gonna help me?”

 

 

“Yes.”

 

 

“And how exactly is he gonna do that?” Truthfully, James doesn't care how Miranda thinks he could do that, he wants to know why she thinks Peter Ashe _would_. Ten years ago, he was willing to help his friends find a comfortable place to live in exile. But now? Peter Ashe, famous for giving piracy no quarter, working with Captain Flint, of all pirates?

 

 

“Thomas knew no one more skilled or effective at maneuvering an agenda through Parliament than Peter. If he wanted to convince them to support your vision for this place, he could do that. You know he could do that.”

 

 

“We tried it before, it didn't work.”

 

 

“It was a different time. There's no Alfred Hamilton now. There's no war with Spain now. Peter was faced with both those things and almost succeeded. Without them, it is well within his reach.”

 

 

“Miranda, Peter Ashe isn't the man that you remember. Six months ago, he hanged four men in his harbor for possession of pirated goods. This is not a man that we can negotiate with - that I can negotiate with,” James tries to explain. He knows that Miranda still thinks well of Peter, but this... This is impossible, he's... almost sure of it.

 

 

“Of course you can,” Miranda says, getting to her feet and looking him right in the eye, her voice intent as it had been when they'd fought before he left on the Urca hunt. “Because you will have just presented him with his only daughter. Safe and unharmed and without conditions. And you will have reminded him that you are still the man who sat in Thomas' salon and spoke of virtue and reason and forgiveness. That found inspiration in him. And you will remind Peter that somewhere in his heart, so is he.”

 

 

“This is too important to put all our fates in the hands of one man. Especially a man so committed to seeing me and everyone else I know hanged in his harbor.”

 

 

“There is no other way to achieve what you want to achieve – ”

 

 

“Yes there is! It is sitting on a beach filled with Spanish soldiers – and I'm through delaying,” James snaps. He has a plan, it will work, and if Miranda doesn't believe him now, then she just has to be willing to wait a bit longer and he'll prove it. If part of him knows she's waited too long already, that he's asked that of her for too long, he ignores it, because he has to. So he turns to go.

 

 

“There is no other way once you're willing to tell the truth about your intentions here!” Miranda shouts it at him, and James turns back.

 

 

“I think that I've made my intentions very clear. “His voice is low, dangerous in a way he uses with his men, not with Miranda, but it's the only way he knows to keep some degree of calm.

 

 

“No.” Miranda shakes her head, closing the distance between them again. “You've been anything but clear. You say you fight for the sake of Nassau, for the sake of your men, for the sake of Thomas and his memory. But the truth of the matter is, it isn't for any of those things.

 

 

“What the fuck do you think I am fighting for?” James demands, leaning in close, and somehow almost surprised when Miranda leans right back, so that they're practically snarling in each other's faces. Out of the corner of his eye, James sees that Mona and Arete are circling each other like one of them is ready to attack, and they've never – no matter how he and Miranda have argued, their daemons don't do that. But perhaps they need to finally have this out on every level, once and for all.

 

 

“I think you are fighting for the sake of fighting,” Miranda tells him, and he can't tell if she's accusing him or just saying what she thinks to be true. “Because it's the only state in which you can function. The only way to keep that voice in your head from driving you mad.”

 

 

“What are you talking about? What voice?”

 

 

“The one telling you to be ashamed of yourself for having loved him!”

 

 

And now it's James who has to sit, turned away from Miranda. Mona and Arete break from their circling, Arete going to Miranda while Mona lays her head in James' lap. He strokes his daemon's head, remembering how Eucleia used to preen the fur between her ears, how startled he and Mona had both been the first time, how pleased with herself Leia had been and how Thomas had laughed at them.

 

 

“You were told that it was shameful. And part of you believed it,” Miranda says softly. “Thomas was my husband. I loved him and he loved me. But what he shared with you it was entirely something else. It's time you allowed yourself to accept that.”

 

 

She's wrong. She's wrong. He is not ashamed of Thomas. He could never be ashamed. Never. “The only thing I am ashamed of is that I didn't do something to save him when we had the chance. That instead I listened to you.”

 

 

He regrets it the moment the words are out of his mouth, and Mona tries to move to Arete, to repair the damage, but Arete swipes at her and James can't even look at Miranda. Then they are gone, and he is left staring at the book she set in front of him. Thomas' book, his copy of _Meditations_ with the inscription inside.

 

 

_ James, my truest love. Know no shame. T.H. _

 

 

“ _You know, Miranda said this was a dingy little room, but I don't think it's half bad. Small, certainly, but there's nothing wrong with that.”_

 

 

“ _You're just trying to pretend you know how to slum it, **my lord**. As if I hadn't just pulled you out of a complete mess at that coffeehouse down the street. Could you not worry me like that again, Thomas?” _

 

 

“ _Oh, will you stop fussing and come over here, darling? Our daemons have already gone to bed, I very much think that we should join them.”_

 

 

Thomas had brought _Meditations_ with him that day, had read it aloud to James the next morning, and the day James and Miranda had left London forever, had abandoned Thomas to Bedlam, all he'd been able to think was that he and Thomas had been watching these same docks, that day in his rented room, standing at the window.

 

 

“Is she right?” he asks Mona in a low, aching voice as he traces the writing with his fingers.

 

 

“I don't know, I – ”

 

 

The snarl of a jaguar cuts Mona off as she's knocked sideways by Vane's huge black cat. It's the only warning James has before Vane leaps at him.

 

<><><>

 

 

She is so angry she cannot see straight. How dare he? _How dare he,_ when she was the one who saw disaster coming and was brushed off like a nuisance? Mona seems to regret James’ words immediately, for she steps forward, trying to nuzzle Arete as she usually does to try and apologize. But Arete hisses and swipes at Mona’s face. She falls back, and Miranda sweeps out of the room before she says something irrevocable, her daemon at her heels.

 

 

Outside, Miranda takes a few deep breaths, trying for calm. The town has settled again, the attack done for now. She’s rarely been to Nassau proper, mostly because of James. He’s pointed out more than once that she could be at risk if anyone realized who she was. Her Puritan neighbors know, of course, but they offer no more danger than scorn - thankfully, the only one who’s decided to progress to an attempt at stoning was that little boy. But the rumors that she is a witch will only protect her against the more superstitious among James’ crew. His real rivals wouldn’t be frightened off by wild rumors. Miranda knows this, but it has always grated on her, especially once the isolation at the farmhouse began to weigh more heavily each day.

 

 

 

“You know if they meant it Mona wouldn’t have been so immediately contrite,” Arete says after a long moment.

 

 

 

“I don’t care,” Miranda says flatly. “I love James, but that doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate everything he does. I won’t be accused that way, not when he - when _they_ should have been more careful, and we told them as much.” She and Arete had spoken to Thomas and Leia, to James and Mona, and they had ignored it. Even Miranda hadn’t imagined what happened - she’d thought Alfred might disinherit Thomas, but not lock him in a madhouse. And she hadn’t predicted exile, either. But she’d known there would be a reckoning.

 

 

 

For all the good it had done, to know it.

 

 

 

A tall, rangy man is striding toward the tavern, a murderous look on his face. Beside him is a large cat, mostly black but showing a bit of yellow around its rosettes. Another jaguar, she realizes after a moment, like Eleanor’s Lys, just with different coloring. That’s enough of a clue to tell her this must be Charles Vane, one of those rivals James has always been so worried might target her. She knows enough of the larger situation to know that Vane is the reason James fired on the fort, and if Vane is here then he must know -

 

 

 

She hurries back inside in time to see the pair of them go half tumbling through a doorway, Mona and the black jaguar hissing and snarling at each other. Miranda wastes no time, simply heads for Eleanor’s office, Arete at her heels. “James and Charles Vane are about to destroy your tavern trying to kill each other,” she tells Eleanor without preamble.

 

 

 

“Fucking great,” Eleanor mutters, and then she’s off after grabbing a shotgun from behind her desk, her own jaguar racing a bit ahead of her. Miranda follows a bit more calmly, which is how she sees Eleanor Guthrie terrify two ruthless men into obedience with one shot over their heads and a fervent wish she could have shot them both.

 

 

 

“I rather like her,” Arete murmurs as they step back to allow whatever discussion needs to happen proceed without the sight of them interrupting it. “Despite her comments to us before, I really can’t help but like her.”

 

 

 

Miranda can’t entirely argue with that.

 

 

She tries to tell herself, when she walks into the meeting between James, Eleanor, and Vane, that the important thing is, James has listened. Despite his arguments, despite what he'd said to her, he's decided to go with her plan after all. She wants to be relieved, and she imagines once her temper cools she will be, but for the moment she gives him a cold, furious look, and settles in to observe. Vane is a man nearly as catlike as his daemon, and, it seems, completely incapable of seeing any bigger picture. Eleanor is skeptical of the whole plan, but warming to it.

 

 

After Vane storms out, after Eleanor follows him and comes back insisting that the deal will be upheld, well. It's obvious that she's lying, equally obvious that she'll find some way to make her lie true, insofar as getting Abigail to them anyway. That's all Miranda really cares about, and when Richard Guthrie points out that working with Peter and capturing the gold might be mutually exclusive, she doesn't care about that either. As far as she's concerned, that gold is a distraction now, and if James can be convinced to forget it, all the better. But he'll need to come to that on his own, she can see it.

 

 

They drift toward the doorway, and this time, Arete lets Mona cuddle her, and even licks her ears in return. He can be cuddly and obviously forgiving; Mona did nothing wrong after all. Miranda and James, on the other hand, stand in that doorway side by side, but not meeting each other's gaze. She is not quite ready to soften.

 

 

 

Finally, James says “You ought to go. It'll take me a while to straighten things out down there, but when I do, I'll be home... if you'll have me.” She can hear the apology in his voice, in the hesitation, but she still can't...

 

 

She could go home. For a brief moment, she even considers it. But then she looks over at Arete, and she knows that isn’t acceptable. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

 

“What?”

 

 

“Abigail doesn't know you. She doesn't know Miss Guthrie. She did know me once. She might even recognize me.” The sarcastic edge in her voice isn't entirely intentional, but then it's be a little biting or smack him across the face, so this is probably best. “I imagine your plan would work best if she were cooperative in it, if she felt safe. There's no better way to ensure that than having me be a part of it.” _You're not keeping me shut away on a farm this time, James_ , she is telling him. She is sick to death of being safely put away. Even this brief, less than pleasant foray into James' world has been far better an experience than the isolation that is killing her slowly.

 

 

“Part of it? For how long?” Mona whines, a soft counterpoint to the alarmed bewilderment of James' voice, but Miranda is past willing to accommodate his protectiveness, and Arete is willing only to soothe Mona by grooming her ears.

 

 

“I don't know,” Miranda says, breaking away to walk out a little more, needing to move to ease some of the tension. Still, her arms are wrapped tight around her waist, holding herself in. She cannot lose control, not in this moment, not after earlier. And she and James have still barely looked each other in the eye, he keeps trailing behind her instead. “Aren't we all just figuring this out as we go?”

 

 

He steps back up next to her, still not in a position to look her right in the eye unless she turns, and Miranda says, “You and Peter weren't the only ones committed to seeing Nassau set aright. You weren't the only one who paid a heavy toll towards that end. I stood aside too long.” The conviction takes hold even as she speaks. She is not going back. This fight, James' fight, the fight Thomas began that brought them together and tore them to shreds, it must be hers as well. “If you and I are to be partners,” she says, turning to look at James, “then we ought to be partners.”

 

 

“Very well.” She hears the agreement, the fear and affection in the hoarseness of his voice, but there is no time to say any more.

 

 

“Captain.” The man is young, with dark curling hair and startling blue eyes, a silver and black fox at his feet. He looks almost angry at the sight of them. Miranda could stay, but she decides, for the moment, not to involve herself with the crew directly, so she slips back inside. She's said what she needed to, anyway.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

It's not until they've left the brothel after fixing the mess caused by Logan's murder – by someone Max wants to protect, John suspects, because otherwise it would make more sense to hand the culprit over to the crew's justice – that he and Irial have a chance to discuss what Flint claimed back at the hut, after his _entirely reasonable_ demand for a margin of twenty votes.

 

 

“He lied.” John says in Irish, thinking of Flint's steady green eyes, the utter stillness of his daemon. “He lied, and that shouldn't bother me in the least. Why does that bother me, Iri?”

 

 

“You won't like the answer.”

 

 

“I don't like anything about this mess. How do I keep getting myself into this shit?”

 

 

“I've asked myself that since the incident with the Cossack, the prostitute, and the princess in Moscow. Somehow, I never quite come up with an answer, John. The question is, what are we going to do?”

 

 

“What do you mean, what are we going to do? We're going to find a new way to get that gold, and _fuck_ James Flint and his double-crossing.”

 

 

“I'm still not sure I want to go,” Irial tells him, and John stops walking with a frustrated sigh to glare at his daemon, who isn't silenced by that. “I like it here, and anyway, Flint can't give up on the gold completely unless he wants another mutiny on his hands. Whatever he thinks his new plan with the girl can do, whatever the Barlow woman has to do with it, he can't. We'll still get the gold.”

 

 

“Why are you suddenly so against moving on? Just because that damned wolf daemon of his curled up with you, and gave me cooking advice? Take note, Iri, she didn't contradict her human earlier. Whatever fondness you think she's displayed doesn't mean anything. It was probably all an act anyway to make sure we'd stay useful. We've never stayed in one place, it's served us well until now, I don't see why you want to fiddle with it.”

 

 

“We liked it, just now. We liked fixing that mess. Not that Logan and the woman, Charlotte, died, but that _we_ could fix it. That Muldoon and his otter came to _us_ , wanted our help. That Max and her wildcat accepted it, listened to the story you concocted. We like it, and we like that the crew hangs on your every word. Where else have we ever had even a semblance of a place in things, where have we ever fit?”

 

 

“That was all part of the plan and it doesn't matter, we're not staying, there's no need to – ”

 

 

“I saw you earlier,” a voice cuts into the argument. It's a voice John knows all too well, carrying the accent of Belfast undercut with Sevilla, an accent only ever found in one household, to John's knowledge.

 

 

“Go away, I don't want to talk to you,” John says without turning his head to look at his unwanted companion, thinking of the daggers in his boot – he'd stolen the boots off a dead Spaniard, and there was already a blade in each. Maybe he'll need them.

 

 

 

“Sean, please – can we just talk?”

 

 

“That’s not my name,” John says, not looking at Conor, or his lynx, though he does stop walking. Irial presses against his leg, trying to comfort him, their argument forgotten for the moment in the face of an external threat.

 

 

“It is your name, and whatever you go by now it always will be,” Conor tries to insist.

 

 

“My name is John Silver, and my daemon’s name is Emilia.” He isn’t about to tell Conor that his daemon goes by Irial now – he and his Edana would understand that significance and would probably find it twisted and wrong. Maybe it is, but it isn’t any of Conor’s business how John and Irial cope with all they’ve lost. “What do you want?”

 

 

“It’s been eighteen years, can’t we want to talk to our little sibling?” Edana asks, trying to nuzzle Irial. Iri yips unhappily and darts back. John can’t help but think how Irial actively enjoys curling up with Flint’s Mona, and he himself went from being bewildered to enjoying how much Iri likes it.

 

 

“It’s been eighteen years,” Iri says flatly. “And you left us.”

 

 

Conor rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, don’t act like I had a choice in the matter! I was arrested!”

 

 

“You ran first,” John says, his voice as empty as his daemon’s. He’ll never forget it, _never_ \- seeing his older siblings fleeing into the darkness, Mairin with a satchel on her back and her daemon in her arms, Conor with his lynx racing beside him. Leaving him and Sibeal to their fate. In his heart of hearts John knows that Conor’s telling the truth about that night, that Conor probably didn't get far and at best he'd have been arrested faster if he'd stayed, but there are other truths he’s ignoring. “And you had a choice in other things before that, Conor. Both of you did, and you chose to do nothing.”

 

 

“That isn’t fair. We were children too. We believed -”

 

 

“You believed our being born was why Madre died, so you thought the way Da treated us was well earned, I fucking know that. And you had a _choice_ in that. Don’t say you didn’t. And so you were arrested, I’m sorry for you, but they took us - they -”

 

 

“To an orphanage, that’s all.”

 

 

_That’s all_. John wants to laugh, he wants to scream. “They took Sibeal away,” he says. “They took her and Irial away from us, with all four of us begging them not to until our voices went hoarse. They picked up our daemons,” he adds, and doesn’t bother to say that touching daemons was the least of what went on there. “With their bare hands, not even gloves, and they took our twin away somewhere, we don’t even know if they’re alive. I’m sorry if you were in jail, or put to hard labor, I’m sorry if that was hard. But you have no idea what Emilia and I have been through, the things we’ve seen, so perhaps you should think before you want to _talk_!”He spits out the word, and then he realizes there are tears in his eyes.

 

 

“Se- I mean, John -”

 

 

“Fuck you,” John says, and when the damned lynx approaches this time Irial snarls and swipes at her face. It's enough of a clue about how much they want to be left alone that Conor and Edana fall back, and then John says, “I have to go now,” and they don't object to it. John walks away, fingers clenched tight so no one will see his hands shaking.

 

 

Once out of sight, he drops down, fingers curling in Irial's ruff until he feels the sting of it on his own neck and she tries to struggle away from him. “You want to stay? With _him_ on this island?” he snarls, barely feeling the pain. They have both felt so much worse, after all.

 

 

And he knows he's won the argument. When he goes down to the quay and sees Nicholas and Vincent tying up their boat, he even knows what to do.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

There had been a globe in Hennessey's office, the first time James had been there. Only a boy, he'd been unable to resist spinning the thing when Hennessey had briefly left him alone. Years later, Thomas had had one in one of the upstairs book rooms and one day, early in their relationship, James had found himself spinning it, for a moment a boy again in the giddy rush of infatuation.

 

 

He feels like those spinning globes now, everything whirling too fast to see. First, Miranda upending his plans and insisting on playing an active role in a scheme that threatens to prevent his enacting the plan for the Urca he's developed so carefully. Then, Billy is alive and apparently perfectly willing to assist James in winning the vote against Hornigold. And now, the gold is gone. James wants to deny that there's a certain relief in that – if only because it simplifies things – but he can't. He also can't deny that he needs a new plan, and soon. Even while listening to Dufresne, and absently noticing that his daemon is strangely calm, he's already trying to figure out what to do. And he knows he's going to need Silver to do it. “May we have the room, please?” he asks when Dufresne is done, though it's more an order framed as a question.

 

 

“What a fucking mess,” Silver says when Dufresne leaves.

 

 

“We need to think very carefully about how to navigate these next steps. The case for returning the girl to Charles Town in exchange for reconciliation cannot come from me. I've just had my authority challenged. Even on it's merits, the argument would seem desperate and invite doubt and suspicion. But if it came from you, we might just stand a chance – ”

 

 

“Let me stop you right there. There is no 'we'. _We_ stopped being a thing of any relevance about an hour ago.” Silver approaches the desk, his daemon at his heels. James hears Mona whine softly and he curls his fingers in her fur, wondering where the sudden flare of panic is coming from. This is nothing, convincing Silver to stick around will be easy, why does he feel sick at the words Silver just said, at the way his daemon is sticking so close to him when she'd been more friendly with Mona than he, truthfully, had liked?

 

 

“Is that so?” he asks, voice dangerous to hide the inexplicable fear.

 

 

“I believe I've been clear about the nature of my investment here. The gold was the inducement. Now no gold.” The fox daemon's ears are flat as her human leans forward, bracing himself on the desk. She doesn't seem happy, but Silver is colder, more collected than James has ever seen him, and it only tightens the knot in his gut.

 

 

“It's an unfortunate development that we have to adapt, and quickly.”

 

 

“Adapt? I've had about my fill of adapting lately. Doing your bidding, keeping the crew in line for you.”

 

 

“I wasn't the only one to benefit from that.”

 

 

“It certainly seemed that way. Even now you're the only one benefitting from it.”

 

 

“What are you saying, that I'm benefitting from the gold having disappeared?” Of course, in a way he is, but it's unsettling that Silver's realized it. How could he possibly know what Guthrie said, or did something else give it away? If he can't convince him to stay, of course, it hardly matters.

 

 

“It certainly solved a number of problems for you, didn't it? I have half a mind to wonder if you didn't orchestrate this whole thing to your advantage.”

 

 

James gets to his feet, Mona coming around the desk to approach Emilia again. This time, the fox seems less certain of her choice to stay by her human, slowly closing the distance despite Silver's glare. “Listen to me. I understand your disappointment at this recent news. I share it. But I need your help. They need your help.”

 

 

“Oh, please. Don't try to convince me to do it for the sake of their futures.”

 

 

“For the sake of your own,” James says, and now he turns cold as well, finding a bit of leverage and using it mercilessly. He _needs Silver to stay_ , even if he can't explain exactly why, even to himself. “Those men listen to you. They give a shit about what you have to say. What you think, what you want them to think. Where else in the world is that true? Where else would you wake up in the morning and matter? You walk out on this, and where the fuck are you going?”

 

 

Something flickers in those blue eyes, and Silver turns away, hurt and anger written in the set of his jaw, the narrow-eyed glare heaims toward James in that last moment before turning his back. “Irial, get the fuck away from the dog.”

 

 

“Irial?” Mona asks, and James' daemon sounds as shaken as he feels, damn it all to hell.

 

 

“We felt safer if I didn't use my name,” Emilia – _Irial_ – says. “Bad habit of ours.” She goes back to her human, who scoops her up and walks to the edge of the tent, hesitating with his daemon in his arms.

 

 

“You'll address the men?”

 

 

“Yeah.”

 

 

“Many of them won't want to hear it. Don't you want to discuss how you'll approach them?” He hasn't cared before now how Silver wins people over so long as he does it, not really – he'd asked him why he thought the men on the beach might prefer Vane, but that isn't the same. He wants to know what Silver will do, wants the chance to plan it out with him.

 

 

“I know what I'm doing,” Silver says, looking over his shoulder with something almost like scorn in his eyes. And then he's gone, and James is left staring as he vanishes into the darkness. He doesn't know how to feel about it, or about the sudden inexplicable _need_ to keep Silver, at least for the next little while.

 

 

He looks down at Mona, who is looking up at him, and he can tell she doesn't have any better answers than he does.

 

<><><>

 

 

Miranda is certain that Richard Guthrie thinks he's being helpful, even kind, in a way. She supposes he might even have a point. But it doesn't matter. She trusts Peter, to an extent – she was never quite so capable of complete trust as Thomas – and more importantly, she trusts that if she is not there to mediate, things will not go well between James and Peter. So she must go with James, to ensure that the plan of reminding _Governor Ashe_ of the past goes as well as it can.

 

 

And then she doesn't care about Richard Guthrie because his daughter is back, a young woman in a stained, crumpled white nightgown, her daemon a sparrow on her shoulder. Miranda stands from the table and approaches, careful so as not to scare Abigail even more. God, she looks just like her mother, only so much younger. And yet, a world away from the little girl she remembers, a quiet little thing who loved the library at the townhouse, whose daemon was always in quiet proper shapes – except that, like Arete, Abigail's Helios was forever trying out strange colors or other little quirks.

 

 

“Abigail? Do you remember me?” Miranda has to focus on keeping her voice gentle, trying to remember that Abigail is still young, and has been through a terrible ordeal. And she is very careful to hide what feels almost like a plea, to this girl who doesn't need that weight dropped on her shoulders.

 

 

_Do you recognize me?_

 

 

Abigail running to her without reservation is the kind of balm to her battered sense of self that Miranda hadn't known could still exist. Looking over Abigail's shoulder, she sees Arete grooming Helios, who is now in the form of a housecat – or what would _be_ a housecat, if he didn't have a leopard's spots. “Not settled yet, little one?” she hears her daemon ask, between soft happy purrs.

 

 

Abigail is crying silently against her shoulder, and both of them are holding on for dear life. Eleanor watches, a hand on her Lys' back, and the strangest look on her face. Something confused and sad and wistful all at once, before she turns on her heel and leaves them alone.

 

 

“I can't believe you're here. Papa told Mama that you were dead, that you'd died aboard a ship to the New World.”

 

 

Later, Miranda will think of this comment and feel ill at the missed clue, but in the moment she only assumes that Peter told Sarah a kind lie, rather than the truth – not that he really knew all of it since they hadn't corresponded aside from the letter telling them of Thomas' death. But he must have guessed some of it, from the moment when James had declared that they would be going to Nassau. There were only so many fates for an exile on Nassau, and a man with naval training...

 

 

“I think your father didn't want to admit that he suspected we weren't coming here to be respectable settlers,” she tells Abigail. “But you're not to worry about that. You're safe now, I promise that. And you'll be seeing your father soon.”

 

 

“Captain Vane was going to ransom me back to him,” Abigail says. “He was... He did not exactly show me cruelty, though I could not call it kindness when I was still locked in a cell and he'd made it clear that he'd kill me if my father didn't pay him. Low was truly cruel, though. Lio and I were happy that Vane killed him. Was that wrong?”

 

 

Miranda thinks of James coming back to her, Mona looking more purely wolfish than she'd ever seen before or since, thinks of being told that Alfred was dead. She strokes Abigail's hair as Arete nuzzles Helios. “No, I don't think it was wrong. Not after how he treated you. We're going to take you back to your father, Abigail.”

 

 

Eleanor sends a man for James, and even Miranda isn't expecting him to introduce himself as James McGraw. He's trying to be as non-threatening as he can be, Mona making herself smaller in the way she knows to do. Playing up her dog traits over her wolfish ones. It doesn't help all that much – Abigail's Helios shifts into a huge dog to stand beside her, a comfort and a protector, and soon enough Miranda's ushering her up to the room Eleanor has given them.

 

 

Later that night, Miranda lies awake listening to Abigail tossing and turning in the other bed – James is sleeping down at the camp with his men, keeping an eye on them, which is sensible enough. Neither the restless girl or the missing man is what keeps Miranda awake this night, not what has her slipping downstairs and out the back door. She can't say what it is, not really. She doesn't exactly go outside, just cracks the door open and lets the sounds of a Nassau night in. Arete goes outside, to the edge of the distance he can easily go, pacing away the tension they both feel.

 

 

Then there's a tug on their bond, and Miranda sees that Arete is standing at attention. "What?" she calls softly, peering out into the dark. Then she sees it too, in the light of a lantern hanging outside one of the shops. A bird, twisting in the air and changing form with each turn. Then the daemon - for it must be someone's daemon - shifts into a bat and shrieks in alarm when it realizes it's being watched. Arete moves and Miranda gasps - the leap takes him beyond comfortable distances, and she is on her feet and half-running outside in an instinctive response to the pull.

 

 

Arete does his best to pin the other daemon, who flicks lightning-quick through shapes - falcon, eagle, fox. "Arete, what are you doing? A child -"

 

 

"Not a child, I can smell her human, he's the crewman from earlier, his daemon is _spying_ -" The stranger's daemon shifts into a strange sort of smallish grey and brown leopard, snarling and rolling around to fight Arete in the dirt. Running footsteps make Miranda look up. It's the thief James had ranted about, the man with wild curls and shockingly blue eyes who'd interrupted them earlier. Silver, James had said when she'd asked for updates. The thief who'd ended up surprisingly useful.

 

 

"What the fucking hell?" Silver snaps, reaching down as if he doesn't care about possibly touching Arete and scooping up his daemon. She promptly shifts into the form she'd been in at her human's heels before, a silver-grey fox with black feet and muzzle, as he holds her to his chest. "I – Oh. Mrs. Barlow. With all due respect, what did Emilia and I ever do to you?"

 

 

"You were spying," Arete snaps.

 

 

"We really weren't," says the fox, Emilia. "I'm a lot more subtle when I'm spying," she adds.

 

 

"Maybe not the best defense," Silver tells her.

 

 

"Huh. Maybe not."

 

 

Miranda and Arete look at each other, Arete rueful and Miranda amused, before she clears her throat. "If you weren't spying, then what exactly were you doing?"

 

 

"Stretching. I never quite settled, and sometimes I just need to change shapes for a bit. John likes to watch, so he swiped a spyglass and I did it under the lantern. We didn't see you till it was too late," Emilia says, and Miranda hides her surprise. Mona will talk to her directly, Eucleia and Tethys did as well. Leia, like Arete, even used to speak to whatever humans she cared to, just for the reactions. Still, daemons answering humans directly isn't the most common thing.

 

 

"I hope you didn't steal that from your captain," Arete says to Silver, responding in kind. Silver grins, a flash of white teeth in the dark.

 

 

"No, took it off the warship before anyone got to cataloguing the haul."

 

 

“From what I've heard, isn't that what got you in trouble around here in the first place?” Miranda asks, amused in spite of herself.

 

 

“I got myself out again, which matters more, I think.”

 

 

“For now,” Miranda tells him lightly. “Never assume, Mr. Silver.”

 

 

“Oh, I never do.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

The next morning, John has errands to run, for the voyage to Charles Town. His first warning that he’s no longer alone as he heads for the market stalls is a low growl from Irial. John turns, scowling at the sight of Conor and Edana. The lynx doesn’t even try to approach Irial this time, staying at Conor’s heels and looking dejected. “You’re right. Mairin and I ran, and we didn’t think,” Conor says, meeting John’s eyes. “Do you think I’m proud of that, John? Every day I look at Edana and I see Madre’s daemon and I know how ashamed of us they would be.”

 

 

John tucks his hands in his pockets, right hand curling around the rosary he’s kept there. “I don’t want to do this, Conor. I shouldn’t have yelled before. It was a long time ago, there’s no point to it. I don’t even plan to be on this island for much longer, so don’t worry about it, huh?”

 

 

“You don’t have to go.”

 

 

“I’m not leaving because of you, don’t be ridiculous,” John says, ignoring the fact that, actually, Conor’s presence is one reason he wants to leave. He’s spent too long denying his past; the last thing he wants is to have to face it. He’d already done too much before, when he’d thrown what happened in Conor’s face. There’s no point to it. No point to the horrors of before, no point to dwelling on them now.

 

 

“We would never be so arrogant,” Edana says, carefully approaching. She doesn’t invade Irial’s space, just moves a bit closer. “But we - we can never make up for it. We can’t even do much for you now, bound into indenture as we are. We are sorry, Sean, Kevay. And we’ll never use those names again since you don’t like them but those were your names when we abandoned you, so just this once-”

 

 

“ _Stop it!_ ” The shout is Irial’s, and John picks her up so she can bury her face in his chest and he can take comfort from holding her.

 

 

“I don’t want this,” John says. “I don’t - need this. I just want to go forward, Conor. That’s why I came here, that’s why I’m going to leave once I get what I want. I can’t go back, and if you’re truly sorry, you won’t make me do that. I can’t give you any absolution, if that’s what you were hoping for. You and Mairin weren’t much more than children yourselves, of course you ran. I run from everything, I’ve no right to judge you.”

 

 

“I didn’t want you hurt,” Conor says. “I’d always hoped you and Sibeal would have each other at least.”

 

 

“Unfortunately, we don’t.”

 

 

Conor looks at him for a long moment. “I should go. I have a long trip back,” he says quietly. “If you - I work on the Tyrel plantation. That’s why I’m here for a couple of days every month or so, he, he sells goods on the quiet to some of the places down here. I make deliveries, and handle some other business. If you _are_ here longer than -”

 

 

“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” John says, and the lie is easier than it ought to be.

 

 

After he's done with his errands, John finds himself at Eleanor’s tavern. He pays for a drink he barely touches before he gets up, ducking out through the back. Again it’s Irial who alerts him that they aren’t alone. Miranda Barlow sits on the stairs with a book in hand, her large cat daemon curled at her side. There’s a girl with her - she must be about fifteen or so, with huge dark eyes and a daemon in the form of a dove on her shoulder. She must be Abigail Ashe.

 

 

For a moment, John sees Lizzie, whose daemon had preferred bird forms and whose big brown eyes had been as haunted as this girl’s. He sees Lizzie - and he hears her scream as the amber blade comes down, her daemon’s shrieks a shrill counterpoint. _Damn_ Conor for bringing this all back, John thinks, and damn _himself_ for letting it happen. “Hello, don’t mind me,” he says with a lightness that sounds hollow in his own ears.

 

 

“Mr. Silver, I hear we are to leave in the morning?” Mrs. Barlow asks, her tone as light as his, but not as hollow.

 

 

“Yes, ma’am, as soon as we have all our supplies ready,” John says evenly. “Sorry for disrupting your reading.” Abigail Ashe is watching him steadily, as if expecting him to pull a knife or a pistol and threaten them. He wants to tell her he’s not that kind of pirate - not much of any kind of pirate, really. But he has a sense that talking to her might only upset her more. Still, he tries to smile at her - she’s done nothing wrong, poor girl didn’t ask for any of this.

 

 

“Why don’t you go upstairs, Abigail?” Mrs. Barlow says quietly, and she hurries away. “James has had a lot to say about you,” Flint’s lady says when they’re alone. Her eyes are as dark as the Ashe girl’s, but where the girl had been vulnerable, there is as much steel in Miranda Barlow as there is in her partner.

 

 

No surprise, really. “So you’ve said. I’m sure none of it was good.”

 

 

“A little of it, though most of the positive commentary came from Mona. You’ve been quite useful lately though, as I understand it. I hope you continue on that way.”

 

 

Is that a threat? “What do you care?” John asks. “You tried to get Flint a pardon and clearance to Boston, ma’am, so I’m guessing that your end goals, whatever they are, don’t have much to do with stealing one last big prize.”

 

 

“My goals align well enough with James’ goals, and that is hardly any of your business.”

 

 

“It might be, if you want me to be useful.”

 

 

“Do you plan on it?”

 

 

“Should I?”

 

 

“Miranda, I wa - what are you doing here?” Flint’s voice interrupts them. He’s eyeing John suspiciously, but Mona trots over to greet first the Barlow woman’s long-legged cat and then Irial. The cat murmurs something John can’t hear, and Iri makes the warbling sound she used to greet Sol’s red fox with when she was copying Aliza’s form. Mona licks both their faces in a show of canine affection that leaves John with an uncomfortable twist of guilt.

 

 

“I was just leaving, if you’ll excuse me,” John says, snapping his fingers when Irial doesn’t seem inclined to leave Mona just yet. At this point, her attachment to Flint’s daemon can only make life harder, given everything.

 

 

“Are the supplies ready?” Flint asks before John can make his getaway.

 

 

“All the ones I was tasked with,” John says. “For the rest, I can check in with Mr. Scott for you if you like, bring back his report, or do you want him to report directly to you?” Why did he offer to do that?

 

 

“Tell him to come by the tavern to speak with me, when he’s done sorting the men,” Flint orders, and John leaves with a nod, Irial trailing him reluctantly. He goes down to where the men are camped to pass on Flint’s message.

 

 

When they set sail the next morning, he picks up Irial and holds her close. This is the right decision, the one that will get them what they’ve wanted all along. He just has to keep telling himself that, until this sentimentality, so unlike his usual self or Iri’s, goes away. Like he told Eleanor, guilt goes away if you let it, and in John’s experience the same is true of just about any other emotion. He learned the trick of it long ago.

 

 

So why is it so hard this time, and why can’t he convince himself it doesn’t matter?

 


	3. Soon We'll Know What's What

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew is en route to Charles Town, and so far, things are going according to plan.

“Everything all right?”

 

 

“Yes. I'm all right.”

 

 

The girl's terrified of him. James hates to admit that he understands why. He's tried his best to be as kind as he remembers how to be, made damn sure that his men know they're to leave her in peace. In fact, he's given specific orders that they're to give both her and Miranda as wide a berth as possible. But still Abigail flees from him as much as she can, tucking herself into a far corner while her daemon perches as a sparrow on her shoulder. The bird watches with sharp bead eyes as James takes a seat across from Miranda, but he doesn't think either girl or daemon can hear him.

 

 

“She was writing about me.”

 

 

“Do you think?” Miranda's leaning back in her chair, not even bothering to look up, but he can hear the amusement in her voice.

 

 

“I suppose I can't blame her. A girl her age with what she's been through. It's a credit to her that she can function at all.”

 

 

"Look at her," Miranda says, looking over to where Abigail and her daemon have tucked themselves away. "When I first learned she was on the island, I saw in my mind a five-year-old child hiding behind her mother's dress. Then I saw her. I realized she's a woman. It's like she's some sort of clock that's finally struck its chime and woken me from this dream we've been living, reminded me how many years separate me from a world I still think of as home. How unrecognizable the woman I am now would be to the woman I was then."

 

 

"I recognize you. You recognize me?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"So that's in our favor."

 

 

“The question is will Peter recognize either one of us?”

 

 

There's a part of James that wants to point out that the time for worrying about that was before they set off, but he doesn't. From where she and Arete are curled together on the window seat, Mona watches him as if to tell him not to dare say anything to cause trouble again. As usual, his daemon has a point.

 

 

“I don't know,” James says honestly, fiddling with Thomas' signet ring on his pinky finger. Miranda's eyes drift to it – she knows it's there as surely as he knows she still wears her wedding ring (on the right hand now), but they never speak of either piece of jewelry. “I hope so. I hope that when we explain everything to him, when I add what Eleanor and her father are working to settle in our absence, that even if he no longer holds any fondness for us that the idea of taming New Providence is appealing enough to make the deal.”

 

 

“It would certainly improve his standing, and Peter was always a man who knew how to look for advantage. Even when he got in trouble, or so Thomas and Andrew used to say. They were all in school together, though Peter was ahead of them both.”

 

 

James never met Andrew, Thomas' favorite half-brother. He did meet Robert, who neither Thomas nor Miranda much liked, an ambitious little schemer who James has always believed somehow had a hand in Alfred's plans. He was Alfred's favorite, the most likely to be designated heir if the only legitimate son was out of the way. Miranda said once Andrew got himself disowned for marrying a Russian woman and converting to her faith for her. So many of the stories Miranda and Thomas told about their courtship and early marriage involved Andrew, so that James almost feels he did know him, through their eyes.

 

 

Something about the comment, Peter's skill at finding advantages everywhere, prickles on the back of James' neck. He doesn't know why. It's a skill he shares, after all. But still... there's something... “Well, we do offer him an advantage. One that has more lasting benefit than keeping up his reputation by hanging me, we can only hope.”

 

 

“He won't do that,” Miranda says, and she sounds more confident now. “We were his friends, and we're bringing back his daughter. At worst, he'll let you go with a warning that it's a one-time leniency. He won't execute you.”

 

 

If this doesn't work, it might be more merciful to be executed, James thinks, but he doesn't mention that. It won't do either of them any good to think about that. The only way to go on is forward, to whatever end.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“We need to get out of here,” John murmurs, staring into the dark. He can’t sleep, so even though he hasn’t got the watch, he’s out on deck, leaning against the rail. Irial leans against his leg, offering what comfort she can, although he can feel her tremble. They’re both disturbed by what’s happened today, it isn’t -

 

 

Vincent had killed Nicholas for a _look_. A look John gave him, that hadn’t been meant as - Well, all right, John had meant ‘keep an eye on your friend’, but he certainly had never thought Vincent would take that as an order to kill Nicholas to keep him quiet. Why would he ever think that? Just days ago, this entire crew hated him. Persuading people into something with a performance was one thing, John’s been doing that for most of his life. But this…

 

 

“We never thought of power, not really,” Irial says quietly.

 

 

She’s right. Power has never been for them. Survival, yes, the brief high of successful cons - which is, he supposes, a kind of power, a talent for weaving temporary spells with nothing but word and wit. But real power, the kind that makes people follow you, obey orders whether intended or not, has never been something they thought themselves likely to have. “We should have known, though. We saw -”

 

 

“That was different. Just fanning sparks that already existed, we’ve never tried that but we did know we probably could. It’s in our blood to do that much. But, S-”

 

 

“That is not -”

 

 

“It _is_ your name. But fine, _Gabriel_ , we’ll compromise.”

 

 

“Iri-”

 

 

“And we both know _that_ isn’t _my_ name. I’m not even sure it’s really better than Emilia, or Plata, or any of them. Anyway, my point was that as good as we might have expected to be at rabblerousing, this is more like, like what they did. Before. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a repeat of that. We’d be the ones shot dead or hung by the neck, this time.”

 

 

“Well, we just have to get through this voyage and we’re out anyway.” They’re here to cover their tracks, and also, a little, because helping Flint with his new plan even while scamming him out of the gold makes John feel like things are squared. Flint used him, so he gets revenge for that, but there’d be no gold without Flint. So maybe John owes him a little help with his alternative plan. Just to balance things out, and cover his tracks.

 

 

That’s what he told himself, when he didn’t immediately cut and run. It had nothing to do with what Flint said.

 

 

“Are we? Flint was right about us, wasn’t he? We like mattering. We just didn’t know we could matter this much. And if part of me wants to know what we can do now that we do know, then so does part of you,” Irial says, and John doesn’t dare look down at his daemon. He can feel her watching him, daring him to deny it. So he says nothing, and lets her continue. “And we will have to learn how to handle it, and be careful, so things don’t go wrong.”

 

 

“Have you forgotten that we can’t stick around? How exactly will we explain the gold? And I don’t think we could hide it for very long, do you?” John snaps, finally, because he can’t deny it but it doesn’t matter. They’ll have to learn how to be powerful somewhere else, if they get the opportunity. They cannot stay here.

 

 

“We could change things. Blame it on Nicholas. We didn’t want him dead, but since he _is_ already dead…”

 

 

“And Vincent would just go along with this?” John says, voice dripping with scorn. “Honestly, Irial -”

 

 

“Irial? I thought your name was Emilia.” Hidden by the dark, Mrs. Barlow’s wildcat daemon appears from seemingly nowhere, head cocked. His eyes gleam as he watches them, and John glances around. Sure enough, Mrs. Barlow has followed her cat out, leaning against the doorframe. She looks as tense and pensive as John feels, though presumably for different reasons.

 

 

“We weren’t speaking English, Master Cat,” Irial says with cool dignity. “How do _you_ know that Irial isn’t simply Emilia translated into the language we spoke?”

 

 

“It could be, but I’m going to say it’s not,” the cat replies, approaching on his long legs. He’s taller than Irial, of course, but that doesn’t keep John’s daemon from glaring up at him instead of being cowed. She could shift, given that they know she has the skill, but the crew doesn’t know and anyone could come up on them.

 

 

As has just been demonstrated.

 

 

“We're not English,” Irial says after a pause, nipping John's ankle in irritation at his silence. “But John's playing English, so I'm using a name in the English fashion. A lot of people in less than legal ways of life do it.”

 

 

“Irial, then. It's a pretty name,” says the cat. “I am Arete. This is Miranda.”

 

 

John knows Mrs. Barlow’s name, of course, but he doesn’t say as much. “Nice to meet you properly this time,” he says instead, wondering why it’s on the tip of his tongue to offer different names entirely.

 

 

“Who’s Gabriel?” Arete asks, and John’s blood runs cold. He shoots Irial a dirty look, but she seems unconcerned, so all he can do is try for a casual shrug.

 

 

“My middle name is Gabriel. Iri here calls me that from time to time when I annoy her.” Technically, this is not a lie. It is his middle name, and Irial does use it when she’s vexed with him, as she currently is. What he’s leaving out is that it’s her expression of a very specific kind of anger, and that “John Silver” is not the name Gabriel goes with. Technically, “John” is just an English translation anyway, more or less, but he isn’t about to mention _that_ either.

 

 

“Well, whatever your name is, shouldn't you be up on deck with everyone else to see your crewmate laid to rest?”

 

 

She's right, and if he isn't there, people will have even more questions than they already do.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

After the burial at sea for the man who fell from the rigging, the last thing Miranda expects is for Abigail to come see them. But her Helios is on her shoulder in the form of a raven, and she looks determined as she tells them there's something they must know. As she tells them that Peter vowed to hang Captain Flint for his attack on the Maria Aleyne. For the attack on Alfred – specifically that, the assassination of Alfred is what changed Peter from being reasonable about pirates to the hunter he is now.

 

 

When James and Mona go out on deck after Charles Town is sighted, Miranda looks to Arete before they follow. “Why would Peter care so much about Alfred?”

 

 

“No idea,” Arete says, kneading his paws. “I know I don't like it, but it makes it even more important that we be with James and Mona. Peter can't know that James is Flint – he's probably guessed that he turned to piracy but -”

 

 

“Who else would go after Alfred Hamilton? You think he doesn't suspect? But that doesn't make it any less confusing. Peter only narrowly escaped being in as much trouble as we were,” Miranda says, getting to her feet and heading up top. “I don't like it, Arete. There's something... _wrong_ , here.” She stops talking as she comes up next to Abigail, and then James comes over to her.

 

 

“I've made arrangements. You'll be safe here until I return,” James tells her quietly, drawing her off from Abigail.

 

 

“What are you talking about? I'm going with you,” Miranda argues back in a hissed whisper. No. He is absolutely not doing this, not now.

 

 

“You heard what she said. It's too dangerous.”

 

 

“If I'm standing next to you, he's far more likely to see you as the man you were.”

 

 

“He's more likely to see you as a woman abetting a known pirate and hang you alongside me. I see no reason for you to take that risk.” Mona tries to pull Arete close, but Arete dodges her, fur standing up.

 

 

Miranda looks at James and remembers telling him, ten years and a lifetime ago, that the danger was real, that they had to leave. She remembers the look in his eyes, that moment she understood Mona was both dog and wolf, a huntress. When she realized they were going to Nassau. She thinks that this is the last step on the road they were on then, but where before she was so certain of the destination, now she cannot be. “Of course there is reason.”

 

 

“None that I am willing to take.”

 

 

“It was my fault,” she says, and in spite of everything her voice does break a bit. She will never regret killing Alfred, not really, but she does, to an extent, regret that she set James to do it, and she absolutely regrets that Andrew might blame himself for it. “I'm the one who learned Alfred Hamilton was a passenger on that ship. I knew the moment I told you what it would drive you to do. I knew the danger it would put you in, knew the horrors it would incite. I told myself to remain silent and spare him, spare you those horrors, and yet I told you anyway. If you're going to face judgment behind those walls, then so should I, for if anyone is responsible for what happened that day, it's me.”

 

 

 

This is on her as much as it is on James. She will not let him face the consequences alone.

 

 

 

James' expression softens just slightly, and she knows he won't leave her behind, but then the men of Charles Town are calling, and in moments they're in a launch, heading for shore. At first, it all seems to be going well, and yet – Miranda notes how all the men but the guard captain are... oddly vacant, their daemons trotting placidly at their sides. Placid, yet their shapes are fierce, large predators all, and it... it doesn't feel right, somehow.

 

 

 

“What is that?” Abigail asks, interrupting the captain before he's able to respond to James saying that yes, he wants an audience with the governor. Miranda's gaze follows Abigail's to an odd contraption, it looks something like the Maiden, a device used in Edinburgh to behead people. She saw it when she was there with Thomas, he'd said it was supposed to be more precise and therefore less brutal than a headsman, but the blade is not metal. It's some strange stone, amber-colored but the light hits it so that it looks too glossy, like obsidian almost.

 

 

She doesn't know why it gives her such a chill, though it might be because the guard captain simply ignores the question, gesturing instead at a dead pirate left hanging. “This was a different place before the governor arrived. Raiders routinely hit our shipping. All up and down the coast as far north as Mt. Pleasant, as far south as the Cumberland Sound. It took him a short while to learn how to deal with it. But once he committed to fighting the problem, things changed. You see, he made these people unafraid. Everyone realized, like just about anything else in this life the moment you stop fearing it, it loses all its power."

 

 

 

And Miranda knows this is going to go wrong, even before one of the guards hits James in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, and his wolf daemon – tame, though, docile until this moment, _why_? screams some small part of her mind – tackles Mona before she has a chance to fight, another of the placid daemons, a coyote, turning equally vicious and leaping for Arete as two of the guards seize Miranda's arms.

 

 

“No! The governor is a friend!” she yells, trying to salvage this. Maybe, maybe it's because they still think James is Vane, in spite of everything.

 

 

“The governor gave very specific instructions.”

 

 

“No, don't!” she tries again, Arete snarling as he breaks free of the coyote only to find himself facing a cat the same shape as himself, only spotted, who hisses and leaps for him, a cougar joining the wolf in attacking Mona.

 

 

“If we were able to get our hands on Captain Vane, he never leaves this place again. I don't see any reason those instructions don't apply to you, too. If anything – ”

 

 

“Stop!” That's Abigail, voice shaking but firm, her Helios turning from a black raven to a white even as they watch, and somehow Miranda is certain that Helios will never change again. “They're telling the truth. He's an old friend of my father's,” Abigail continues, her voice getting stronger with every word. “I remember him. I know him. And if you strike him again, my father will know you did so after I made this clear to you.”

 

And that's enough, as the men yank James up and let Miranda go, their daemons returning to that strange docility at their sides. They're encircled and led up the path to the governor's mansion, left in an outer room with the guard captain while Abigail goes to see her father. James gives her a sidelong look as if to say, this was your idea, and Miranda can't exactly argue that point.

 

 

She just has to hope Peter is the man she and Thomas always thought he was, and not the man James fears he will turn out to be. She watches Abigail talk to her father through the half-open door, and hopes.

 

 

Then Peter comes out to them, his foxhound Ismene trotting at his heels like his guards' daemons, yet her dark eyes dart every which way, her tail wagging at the sight of Arete. Miranda decides to take that as a hopeful sign, in spite of Peter's wariness as he looks them over, before a slight smile appears on his face. “Welcome to Charles Town.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

James isn't surprised by Peter Ashe's distaste for them, his disbelief that his friends have “turned into you,” as he puts it with such disdain. The truth is, James never much liked Ashe. It was little things, mostly. Thomas liked to go to coffeehouses, incognito – or rather, attempted incognito, because he never did quite manage to pull off not looking highborn, even though he always wore clothes his half-brother Andrew had suggested to look like a common man.

 

 

James had gone with him, in their months first as partners and friends, then as lovers. Peter had gone occasionally as well, and while Thomas had always been sincere in his interest, if quick to take up an argument with some heat, Peter had kept aloof, sipping his drink and watching with an odd curl to his lips.

 

 

It hadn't just been that, either. His daemon is a foxhound, animals that hunt for sport. He remembers Hennessey saying that hunting dogs cared more for the chase they were bred to even than for their handlers, save in rare cases. “You should watch out for men with hunting dogs for daemons. Most of them, when it comes down to it, will care more for whatever their goal is than for their friends.”

 

 

James doesn't follow all of Hennessey's advice these days, but in spite of what his one-time mentor had done to him in the end, a lot of his training is as useful now as it ever was, and part of him wonders if this observation about daemons will prove to be one of those things. But the other truth is that he is here now, and he cannot afford to do anything but see this through, whatever his private misgivings.

 

 

He has convinced a crew crying for his death to follow him while he stood covered in the blood of a man more than half of them had preferred as captain. He can do this.

 

 

So he promises Peter truth, and gives it, even letting it show that he's almost insulted that Peter thinks it took four months for him to make captain. He explains about meeting Gates, though doesn't mention his name, and refuses to let the guilt and grief at the memory show.

 

 

But then, of course, Peter asks about Alfred, and for a moment James wonders – why does he care so much? But before he can make an answer, Miranda speaks for him, her voice even, careful.

 

 

“I received a letter. At the time, I said it was from a former servant, but it wasn't. Why I lied then...” She looks toward James, who is staring at her in surprise. “Why I lied then, I cannot say. I suppose it was because James feared for my safety, and if he'd known who I was corresponding with, he'd have worried. That was the last letter, anyway.”

 

 

“Who was it that you were corresponding with?” Peter asks, but something about the set of his jaw makes James think he must already know, and actually, James can probably guess it too.

 

 

“Andrew, of course. He wanted to warn me, because he knew his father was coming to the New World, secretly yes, but Nassau was in his jurisdiction. He could have landed there had he wished, and Andrew wanted me forewarned. I encouraged James to find him. And to kill him. If you're going to kill anyone for it, please, blame me.”

 

 

Miranda gets to her feet, hands pressed to the desk, but she says nothing else, because the guard captain – a Colonel Rhett – cocks his pistol. “The governor may know who you are. I only know _what_ you are. Let us agree that if either one of you gets any closer to the governor than you just did, I will be forced to consider that a threat to his person and I will shoot you where you stand.”

 

 

 

Miranda doesn't move, giving the man a look somewhere between alarm and disgust, but James lays a hand on her back, guiding her down. He knows Miranda, he knows that she is just enough like Thomas to be tempted to make an argument of this, and he knows men like Rhett well enough to know that would be a dangerous thing to do.

 

 

The last thing Thomas asked of them was to protect each other, and James would protect Miranda even if he had not. He hasn't done the best job of it so far, but he'll be damned if he lets anything else happen, even if he must claim regret for a death he does not regret at all. Even if he must beg not to be judged for it when he thinks Alfred Hamilton is the one who should have been judged.

 

 

They're here to save Nassau, here to achieve the goal that all of them, and Thomas, once wanted, they are here for the future he promised Miranda. So James will make this happen however he can.

 

 

 

<><><>

 

 

 

It takes a moment for John to realize what's wrong. On the one hand, he's exasperated by Vincent and his jittery weasel daemon, and Irial has only just kept herself from pouncing on the smaller animal. They wouldn't be in this mess if Vincent hadn't completely overreacted and killed Nicholas, who wasn't going to tell. If he had told, he'd have been just as dead as Vincent and John himself. The idiot was nervous, and John was worried he'd let something slip by accident, that was all.

 

 

 

Now, it turns out Vincent might not even have covered his tracks. And of course, Billy is the one up there, of all the people. Billy the all-but-incorruptible, who will stop at nothing to find the traitors in their midst should anything make him suspicious. Goddamn it all to hell.

 

 

Later, John will always say this is why he didn't immediately notice that Randall, apparently sitting there staring into space, no longer had a daemon. It's Irial who yips in alarm, and then John nudges him over and finds the killing blow. It occurs to him that he is the only person down here – until a hand is clapped over his mouth. It turns out to be Vincent, not such a complete idiot after all. But they are the only ones down here, hidden in the dark as sounds from above and moving figures below make it clear someone's taking the ship.

 

 

If John were a betting man, and occasionally he is, he'd put his money on Captain Vane.

 

 

Vincent's second moment of proactive thinking doesn't last, and they're left among a handful of bodies with him looking to John for answers. John wonders if this is how his uncle must have felt, back during the first and third sieges of Belfast, when he tried to rally men of the town against Williamite forces outside. John himself only remembers the sieges as a lot of noise, cannon shot and screams, and the smell of gunpowder and blood – he was too young to remember more. But Vincent killed a man for a look on John's face, and the only person he has ever known to inspire loyalty like that was his uncle.

 

 

But their odds are even worse than the Irish against the English, because Charles Town means the noose and Vane's crew means the sword. The sword is at least usually cleaner, and faster. But then he spots the knife, and a new idea strikes him.

 

 

“Come with me,” he says, and he knows the set of his own jaw, as he'd seen it by firelight when he'd spied on his uncle persuading his father. He would rather be his uncle's nephew than his father's son, if he has to be one or the other. And everything raked up by seeing Conor again makes him think that maybe he has no choice but to be one of those things.

 

 

“Where are we going?”

 

 

 

“To execute the third option. Persuade Captain Vane to surrender the ship.”

 

 

But he is still a trickster, not a warrior, so he isn't planning to challenge Vane to single combat like Uncle Declan would have done or Flint would almost certainly do. No, he's going to cut the forestay, as he explains to Vincent, because if Flint is successful, all they need to do is delay. Hiding a second time will be harder, as he says, John can agree with that.

 

 

But there isn't any other way. Vincent wants to swim, but John is about to scoff at that. Then, then he says one more thing. “Just tell me this. Are you suggesting we do this to save ourselves, or are you suggesting we do it to save the crew?”

 

 

John doesn't answer, because he has no answer. He cuts the line because he doesn't see a better choice, and he tells himself that Vincent doesn't know what he's talking about. But Irial is a sparrow on his shoulder and they both know Vincent isn't entirely wrong.

 


	4. Let the Flames Climb High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything goes to hell in Charles Town, especially everyone's plans.
> 
> And, eventually, Charles Town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is implied past child abuse in this chapter, physical and attempted sexual. It's very vague, but in case it's enough to upset or trigger anyone, consider this the warning. 
> 
> On a happier note, this is where my plot begins to truly diverge from canon, at least as regards what's been seen on screen. Also, this chapter is part two of what was a forty-page chapter on the events of Charles Town, so if you have jumped straight to chapter 4, please go back and read chapter 3.

They're so close. Miranda can feel it. James is finally ready to give up piracy and live quietly. Peter is listening, they can do this. She knows they can, although she knows that James' skepticism remains. He's probably right, that Peter doesn't really want to do this, but he can't bring himself to refuse them. That's good enough, though, Miranda believes. That is enough to be going on with – she has never been Thomas, who wanted to convert the world to his philosophies, nor is she James, who wants to prove himself and his ideas worthy of following. For her, it is enough that Peter agrees, regardless of why or how he might feel. And yet those nerves don't leave her.

 

 

“There are men in Whitehall who could potentially find a proposal such as yours to be plausible,” Peter is saying. “On religious grounds, on economic grounds. I know some of these men. You could almost certainly win them to your side. But there are other men who will oppose it categorically for the same reason all men refuse to do things they should. Pride.”

 

 

“You think they're too proud to put pardons on the table?”

 

 

“I think they fear you. And to capitulate to something one fears is a humiliation that powerful men cannot accept. If we are to persuade them to ally with you, then we have to completely redefine their understanding of who you are, what you are.”

 

 

“How do you propose we do that?”

 

 

“With the truth. I will come with you to Nassau, survey the situation. If it is as you say it is, you and I will sail to London together. And when we arrive, you will stand up and you will tell your story."

 

 

"My story? What part of my story?"

 

 

"All of it. You will tell them about the affair with Thomas. You will tell them how it ended. You will explain to them what it drove you to do. You will reveal everything. And when you do, Captain Flint will be unmasked, the monster slain. And in his place will stand before all the world a flawed man, a man that England can relate to and offer its forgiveness.”

 

 

That doesn't sound right. Oh, Miranda knows all about playing to people's sympathies – she was a woman in London society, every woman knows how to play on sympathy as well as charm or wit or lust. But for James to confess everything about his relationship with Thomas is more likely to breed disgust, not sympathy – not least because some of the men in Parliament will wish to disguise their own preferences with condemnations all the louder. Surely it must be wiser, safer, to portray it all as some misunderstanding, a tragedy among friends?

 

 

“What you're asking of me – ” James begins, getting to his feet and walking away from them, but Peter cuts him off.

 

 

“I wish there were another way, but I have given it great thought and I cannot find it. Tell me this is something that you are willing to do, and you and I will walk out of this house together, announce our partnership to the street, and prepare to set sail for Nassau.”

 

 

Dimly, Miranda is aware that James must be considering Peter's words, aware of him turning to face them again. Offering his hand to Peter. It's why she wanted James to come, it's what they came here for, but she cannot let James agree to this, not until she asks one truth of Peter, instead of the other way around.

 

 

The clock that had looked so familiar, and yet she could not quite remember. The one that had left her so thrown from the moment she'd noticed it. But it can't be, because if it is...

 

 

The food she's eaten turns to lead in her stomach as she realizes the full, awful truth of what it might mean, that Peter has their clock.

 

 

“Your clock by the wall. Where did you obtain it?”

 

 

“What?”

 

 

“It looks very much like one that used to reside in my husband's parlor in London. Identical, in fact. I don't remember gifting it to you. It was there when I left. So I ask again, how is it you came to possess that clock?” Thomas' other bastard brother Robert owns the house now, Andrew wrote her that, it's entirely possible that he gave away things Thomas or she had particularly liked, there could still be an innocent explanation. But if there is, she has to hear it.

 

 

“It was a gift.”

 

 

“From whom?”

 

 

“From Alfred Hamilton.”

 

 

“The earl was no friend of yours, yet he grants you gifts from his own home. Why would he do that?” Suddenly it all makes sense. Oh, Miranda has always suspected Robert of involvement, and wondered if perhaps Andrew had let something slip by accident – he always loved and trusted Robert, as much as he loved and trusted Thomas. An accident, Miranda could have understood and forgiven if she ever learned of it. But now...

 

 

Now it's as if she sees, all at once, what must have happened. All she has to do is see the fear in Peter's eyes, feel James tense beside her. At their sides, Mona and Arete both shift into hunting stances, as if they know what Miranda is realizing.

 

 

She doesn't notice that Rhett's bloodhound daemon never left the room, but Arete does.

 

 

“All these years it never sat right with me how Alfred was able to turn the navy against James,” Miranda says, and she fights to keep her voice calm, but it does shake, just a little, as this all begins to sink in. “He was far too admired by his superiors for his career to be dashed solely on hearsay. Alfred would have known that. He wouldn't have gone to them armed only with unfounded suspicions. He would have needed a witness, someone who knew Thomas and James well enough to give the accusation credibility. Alfred came to you, didn't he? Asked you to betray Thomas in exchange for which he'd see you made a king in the New World.”

 

 

What damns Peter is that he doesn't even try to deny it, only looks nervous for a brief moment . “Perhaps this is an opportunity for us all to find a little forgiveness.”

 

 

“Forgiveness? What forgiveness are you entitled to while you stand back in the shadows pushing James out in front of the world to be laid bear for the sake of the truth? Tell me, sir, when does the truth about your sins come to light?” And now she's done pretending to be calm, her voice rising.

 

 

“You know nothing of my sins,” Peter snaps. “Were you there when Alfred Hamilton threatened my family's standing, my daughter's future if I failed to cooperate? Were you there when I visited Thomas at the hospital to confess my sins and heard him offer his full and true forgiveness? He knew I had no choice in the matter.”

 

 

No. No he did not just try to use Thomas to justify this.

 

 

“No choice?” _You could have warned us_ , she thinks wildly. _You could have done something and still preserved yourself from Alfred's wrath, but you didn't_ , she wants to scream. And she can guess why. With this to hold over Alfred's head, Peter assured himself success in his own future endeavors.

 

 

“A hard choice. Made under great duress, but with the intent to achieve the least awful outcome. You wish to return to civilization. _That_ is what civilization is. I am so very sorry for what you have suffered and for any part I may have played in it. Please believe that. But at this point, the most important thing is what comes next, what we make of this.”

 

 

“You destroyed our lives!”

 

 

“Miranda.”

 

 

“You caused our exile!”

 

 

“I am sorry for what I did.”

 

 

“Thomas died in a cold, dark place – !” She can see it like yesterday, the owls circling over the heads of everyone in that drawing room, two tall brothers, one dark and one fair, laughing together. She can see Eucleia and how pleased she'd been when Arete hadn't been unsettled by her. She can see Thomas the night he admitted that he'd been more right than he'd ever expected, in that knowing her so well would make her the exception in his interest for men. _“I'm glad of it. I never thought I was entirely fair to you.”_

 

Talking about James, while he was gone. _“I think we needed him, I think perhaps this is why we are both formed as we are, we were meant to be a trio, not a pair.”_

 

 

And that last horrible day. _“Miranda, please, don't argue with them, don't let James be stupid. You get out of here, and you take care of each other. Promise me!”_

 

 

“I am trying to help you!” Peter shouts. “What more do you want from me?”

 

 

Miranda stares at him, and for the first time she thinks she understands James completely, finally, she understands how grief can turn to rage enough to see everything burn.

 

 

“What do I want? I want to see this whole goddamn city, this city that you purchased with our misery, burn. I want to see you hanged on the very gallows you've used to hang men for crimes far slighter than this! I want to see that noose around your neck and I want to pull the fucking lever with my own two hands!”

 

Then, everything happens at once. There’s a hiss from Arete, a howl from Mona. There’s a yell, and a gunshot, shattering into the wall across from Miranda. She realizes a moment later that it only just missed her, and spins to look at the door where Colonel Rhett stands. Arete has his daemon pinned, and he is readying to shoot again but Mona leaps across the room and rips his throat out before he can.

 

 

There’s a crash as the guards force the door open, and Miranda feels someone take her by the arms. “Let me go, let -”

 

 

One of them grabs Arete.

 

 

The roar in Miranda’s ears drowns out James’ enraged yell as the world goes grey and swirling. _Someone is touching her daemon._

 

 

“This is not what I wanted,” she hears Peter say, and then she’s being dragged away, too stunned to respond.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

John isn't surprised when Vane comes down alone. The man is like Flint but worse – likes to handle things himself. That's why he had Vincent lying in wait. “So, what do you suppose happens next?” he asks while Vincent holds a knife to Vane's throat and Vane seems almost... amused by it, more than anything else. Maybe even a little approving, which John shouldn't actually take as a compliment, but why not?

 

 

For the moment, the man's panther is still, visible in the shadows only by her gleaming eyes, but Irial is tense beside him, ready to shift again. He's really going to have to train her out of that habit, especially if they find themselves lingering, or else half of Nassau is going to know that particular secret. Admittedly, there are worse ones for them to know.

 

 

John's thoughts, and any answer Vane would have given, are cut off by someone outside the ship hailing them.

 

 

So, Flint's plan went wrong. Which means that John's plan is in quite a mess, only –

 

 

One would think that Vane would look concerned that they're on the ship likely to be sunk, or pleased that Flint is about to die, but he only looks... insulted? Annoyed? John isn't sure, but even when Vane knocks Vincent aside and drags them both upstairs, he's thinking about it.

 

 

Which is why he's the only one not really surprised when Vane declares he's going to get Flint out of there.

 

 

Billy, of course, thinks otherwise, fully expecting that Vane will pull Flint from Charles Town only to kill him personally afterwards, which actually does make more sense than John likes to admit. And he's wondering if maybe the reason some of Vane's men look so angry is because they disagree with their captain.

 

 

John can hear Vane talking to Billy, talking of war – John thinks of whispers by firelight again – and it does seem that he's sincere about rescuing Flint, but Billy seems to have read the men the same way John has. They don't like this plan at all.

 

 

Just how much becomes far too clear, far too soon.

 

  
<><><>

  


James doesn't know who the man is riling up the crowd. He knows he's a Vice Admiral from his uniform, and he knows he doesn't really care who the man is. All he cares about is that Mona is chained away from him, at a distance that would hurt if their bond wasn't somewhat stretched as most sailors' are. He's shackled to a chair, and Miranda is across the square in a cage, Arete in a second one across from her, that strange amber blade suspended between them. Their eyes meet, and then Peter is in his face, obstructing his vision.

 

 

I meant what I said earlier. This outcome, it's not at all what I would have wanted.” He gestures to the man continuing to rant. “Vice Admiral Lord Kensington. I don't need to explain to you his interest in achieving the greatest possible exposure for this proceeding. He's going to put on a show. And once it begins, I fear I will not be able to control where it goes. Unless you give me what I need to stop it. Sign a confession for crimes that you have already tacitly admitted to me anyway. I'll see this process stopped. The sentence will be carried out quietly, privately tomorrow. Spare yourself the humiliation. Spare her. I'll see she survives this, and survives it whole, which that Device will not allow for. Believe when I say, you do not want that fate for her.”

 

 

James would consider it, to save Miranda, but he doesn't believe Peter. And anyway, it's already too late to stop it – James hasn't spent ten years playing to the emotions of his crew, getting them to follow him, not to know that even if Peter happens to be sincere this time, he actually can't keep his word. Not with this Kensington declaring that James is a monster and Miranda is his minion, urging the fury of the crowd. For a moment, he can hear her say that's even more insulting than witch, and from the tilt of her head when he looks past Ashe's shoulder to see her, he can guess she's thinking that herself.

 

 

“She was clear about what she wanted and I don't think it had anything to do with begging your forgiveness, even if I believed a word you're saying and I don't. What she wanted was the truth to be known. What was the truth of it, my lord? Why did you betray those closest to you all those years ago? Was it really so small and vile as a bribe? The promise of lording over other men in this place? Or were you simply too weak to say no? Too cowardly to do the harder thing and preserve your decency? Tell me it was the latter. Tell me this is all happening because of your cowardice. I could accept that. I might forgive that.”

 

 

Peter says nothing, even as the frenzy of the mob increases.

 

 

“I suppose there's my answer. Even in this moment, alone with a condemned man, you are unable to speak the truth.”

 

 

And at this point, what else is there to say?

 

 

<><><>

 

 

She wonders which of them is going to die first. Miranda has no idea what this thing is that she's in, but she thinks of those guards again, the ones with Rhett at the docks, the ones who had thrown her in here. Their vacant eyes, their daemons in wild forms yet chillingly docile until set on someone. There were rumors in London not long after Queen Anne's ascension, about the Church doing... something involving daemons, something that when the Queen had learned of it, had sent her into a rage. All Miranda ever heard of it was that it had involved children, and Queen Anne, having lost so many children, had been apoplectic over it.

 

 

Miranda looks up at that amber blade glittering unnaturally in the sun, and wonders if she is about to learn more of those rumors than she would have ever wished to know.

 

 

She forces herself to look calm, blank-faced even, as the Naval officer carries on with his sham trial, as the crowd finally quiets to listen and stops jeering and throwing stones at her cage. She thinks of that boy throwing a rock at her in her own garden, remembers his apology and his daemon shifting to a black kitten, and she wonders if their parents would have done any less than she has, any less than James, had they lived through the same things.

 

 

She is not given a chance to speak, she is an afterthought as she has always been. And though Miranda has no reason to think she will survive this, or at least not in any fashion worth surviving in, she decides that if by some chance she does, this is the last time she will be an afterthought. She has been her family's poorer relation, she has been the wife of a future earl, scandalous and barren, she has been Captain Flint's Puritan lover or his witch or today his minion.

 

 

That's done one way or the other. By death, or by something else if she's lucky.

 

 

But they let James speak. He isn't yelling, but he makes his voice carry in the quiet even so. She remembers him in their house, screaming about wanting England's apology, but this calm is worse. This calm matches her own, and Miranda understands now that it is every bit as dangerous as the rage, should they be given one last chance to show it.

 

 

“I have one regret. I regret ever coming to this place with the assumption that a reconciliation could be found. That reason could be a bridge between us. Everyone is a monster to someone. Since you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it.”

 

 

Truthfully, Miranda expects them to end the trial right there. She expects them to drag James to the gallows and send the amber blade slicing down between her and Arete to God only knows what effect. She thinks that it cannot be possible that these men sitting in judgment won't see the danger in James, in his utter calm. But then, she hasn't been in civilization in ten years. She's forgotten how willfully blind so many people are.

 

 

Still, she certainly isn't expecting the commotion, or the new man being marched forward in chains. She recognizes Vane and his black jaguar at his side, Vane's hands and the panther's feet shackled.

 

 

“I came to offer testimony in defense of Captain Flint and his companion,” Vane says. “It is their right, is it not?”

 

 

The guardsman hands Peter a large, leather-bound book that Miranda is not close enough to recognize for certain as Abigail's journal, but it certainly looks like it. She has no idea how he would have gotten it, but she does know that Vane wanted the ship James has, and given what she knows of the man from James, can guess that Vane must have followed them to get it. Why he's here, she can't say, but at least Peter and the judges are as bemused as she is, and James looks equally puzzled.

 

 

 

“If you are who you say you are, why would anybody consider you a credible character witness?” Miranda can just hear Thomas saying that it's very clumsy of Peter to be so openly scornful in public, especially since, credible or not, Vane is right to say that she and James can absolutely have witnesses. Even a sham trial needs to at least look like it's following the rules or it defeats the whole purpose.

 

 

 

“It isn't my testimony I came to offer. It's your daughter's.”

 

 

Peter and the Navy officer disappear as the crowd begins to murmur, as Vane is left shackled beside James, his daemon tied at an uncomfortable distance just like Mona is, handled as Mona and Arete were by those blank-eyed guards. If it bothers Vane to have hands on his daemon, he shows it only in ways too subtle for Miranda to see from here.

 

 

She's impressed, but she doesn't know what good this will do. Peter will have no choice but to read at least some of Abigail's journal aloud, not when it's been handed to him before all the city, but what good it will do beyond a delay when that jury is absolutely selected to condemn them no matter what, Miranda doesn't know.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

John had thought Billy was joking about him having eight votes for quartermaster. But then Vane's leftover men had decided to take him, and Billy had demanded answers, and then the crew had gotten to their feet –

 

 

And Billy had called him a brother, and tried to start a brawl to save him.

 

 

He barely fights himself, too stunned not by being singled out – he's surprised they haven't killed him yet for the forestay – but by being defended. When has that ever happened?

 

 

All John can think as he's dragged off is that Billy had said before that he wanted to go see his brothers. He called John a brother, and the crew had, had claimed him, in their way. John hadn't really understood, had he? He'd known he was building influence, but he'd seen it as being his uncle again, being maybe a little like Flint, someone who stirs people's interest, who can get them to do things.

 

 

He hadn't seen it as being accepted, as becoming part of something. He'd never wanted to see it like that. He's only been part of a family once before, he's only been part of a smaller family with his twin once before. His family had been a joke from the moment his mother was put in the ground and his twin sister was dragged away from him with both of them and their daemons screaming.

 

 

Conor wants to make amends, but he never so much as raised his voice for John when he was still Sean, or for Sibeal. He'd known what their father did with his fists, and what he'd tried to do that had taught John that certain kinds of gentle touch are worse than violence. Conor and Mairin had known, or had chosen not to know. John knows the crew is captive, that their gesture had been just that. They can't do anything, whatever he's being carted off to, Iri dragged along by a huge bird daemon of some breed John name.

 

 

They can't do anything real, but even a gesture is something a boy and girl in Belfast had only ever found in each other, and they were the same person writ male and female when they were children together, it hardly counted.

 

 

Somehow, he isn't surprised to find Vincent sitting in the other chair across the desk when he's shoved into the captain's cabin. For a moment John remembers taking this seat when Flint had asked his opinion, he remembers that brief moment when the harsh lines of Flint's face had softened before John had lashed out and ended that.

 

 

What would have happened if he hadn't done that?

 

 

Vane's quartermaster wants ten names, and Vincent and his fucking weasel said John would be able to help pick them. John looks at Irial, still held tight by the ape daemon of one of the men, but that man's hand is sliding down his daemon's arm, very close to Iri's fur. John wants to laugh. They think that, just that, is a threat anymore?

 

 

He thinks of amber stone, made into a box. Amber stone made into a blade. He thinks of a brother who fled and didn't look back and a sister who very deliberately did before she ran. He thinks of Billy, _“That's our brother you've got there,”_ he thinks of men who hated him a few weeks ago getting to their feet in the only defense they could give him.

 

 

“And the men whose names aren't on that list?” he asks, looking not at Vane's quartermaster but at his daemon, remembering how much she thought they should stay.

 

 

He looks back at the quartermaster, at his bear daemon baring its teeth. And he only needs to see their faces to know the answer.

 

 

“I told him we ain't got no real connection to this crew,” Vincent tries to explain, and his voice is as trembly as his daemon, clinging tight to his collar. “You help him, we both get safe passage back to Nassau.”

 

 

John can't blame Vincent; only a few days before, he'd do the same. But, strangely, the only thought in his mind right now, in a voice that sounds a little like Iri, but more like Sibeal's voice as he remembers it, is If you're their brother, you should be better family than ours were.

 

 

“No.”

 

 

“No?”

 

 

“I won't do it.” His voice remains steady only because he is fighting so hard to keep to the English accent Sol and Lizzie once taught him, in Belfast alleys and Dublin backstreets.

 

 

He expects to be killed right then. He doesn't expect them to kill Vincent. He doesn't expect Vincent to live just long enough to give him one reproachful look before he slumps and his daemon turns to golden dust.

 

 

He expects the threats, and he doesn't like the way the quartermaster is toying with his pickaxe. Suddenly, he's being dragged up again, onto a table, and he struggles even when hands twist in Irial's fur and he feels sick to his bones because hasn't that happened before? Hasn't he faced worse?

 

 

“Wait, wait, stop, stop!” He doesn't know, in his panic, if it was English or Spanish or Irish, he doesn't know what accent he used, and when the blunt end of the axe crashes down on his leg, he doesn't know if he's Sean or John or a dozen other names, all he knows is the pain of it.

 

<><><>

 

 

James doesn't know what Vane's plan is, but he knows Vane by now. They are alike and they are different in all the ways that have, up till now, made them enemies. But it makes sense, when he says, “Figured if anyone was gonna make a trophy of you, it really ought to be me.” James would have probably left Vane to rot, but that's really only because he's older, and sometimes that makes him more practical.

 

 

"So this is your plan? Walk in here and read a girl's diary?"

 

 

"More or less."

 

 

“I see.” _Bullshit_ , is what James means. “So now you have everyone's eyes where you want them, on the two of us, what happens next?”

 

 

The look Vane gives him reminds James that there are those who say Charles Vane, more than anyone else on Nassau, is suited to his daemon, because he's just as much a jungle cat, ready to pounce. But James has always been his daemon too, dog and wolf alike, and he'd take their chances against a pair of cats any day. Running and fighting with them, well, that could be interesting too. As long as one thing is made very, very clear.

 

 

“When it happens, once I'm free, whenever it is, you won't want to get in my way,” he says flatly.

 

 

“When it happens, we will be moving to the jetty and out of this place. Didn't come all this way to have them kill you steps from the gallows.”

 

 

“They're all trying so hard to convince themselves that they have nothing to be afraid of. How is running gonna change that?”

 

 

“What do you suggest?”

 

 

“That we remind them that they were right to be afraid.” No more reconciliation. No more being anything but the wild things they are. James looks over to Miranda, to Arete – he is as much a wildcat as Vane's Tani, just smaller. She wanted to see Charles Town burn, and she looks at him now, she looks at Vane and then at their daemons, and he doesn't have to see every detail of her face to know she still wants exactly what she said she wanted.

 

 

Well. Maybe they can do something about that.

 

 

“I wish to speak on behalf of the defendant,” Vane declares, and he keeps speaking even as Kensington tries to silence him with the rank he doesn't realize no longer matters. “These men convinced you that they speak for you. That the power you've given them is used in your interests. That the prisoner before you is your enemy and they your friends. For those of you who live to see tomorrow know that you had a choice to see the truth and you let yourselves be convinced otherwise.”

 

 

Huh. The cat can make a decent speech. Who'd have thought it.

 

 

“That's enough! Bailiffs, remove him. I said remove him from the dais!”

 

 

Then Vane lifts his arms, and everything is cannonfire and screams as James pounces on the closest man. Mona and Tani break their chains, and he hears Mona let out a howl such as she has never done – even at her most wolfish she has played the dog in the sounds she makes, but not now. Now her voice carries above the din and the screams only increase.

 

 

James sees the amber blade over Miranda shatter into pieces, sees her covering her head as the shards fall, and he tries to make his way to her even as he tears down anyone in his way. But then he sees Ashe, and there is one thing he must do before he and Miranda and Vane leave this place with their daemons.

 

 

He finds a sword, and he finds Peter Ashe, cowering like the coward he is with his foxhound whining at his feet. “Wait! James!”

 

 

A long-legged black cat leaps on the foxhound with a snarl. “Mira-” Peter tries to beg again, and James runs him through. “Her word will be the last word for this place,” he snarls, and he'd meant for Peter to die slow, but Arete rips out the foxhound's throat and there's an end to it. As he and Miranda run to catch up with Vane, James decides it really doesn't matter.

 

 

And once they're in the launch, Mona howls again, loud and long, and the sound echoes over the water

 

 

<><><>

 

 

There's nothing but pain. Sean knows pain, he knows it in ways he tries not to remember. He can hear voices but he can't understand what they're saying. English is forbidden in the house anyway, and since Madre died, so is Spanish when Da can hear. But they're not speaking Irish, Da won't like that, but he can't make his paying customers speak only what he wants to hear. Sean must be downstairs in the tavern, why is he in the tavern? He's only supposed to be here to clean up in the mornings to make ready for another night. It's Conor who cleans as the night wears on, who gets to have a bit of fun with the chores.

 

 

The knife stirs him just a little, and Sean is John again, his dimming vision focused on the one man's belt. The quartermaster is screaming, “What?! I gave you an order! What is your fucking problem?!”

 

 

“The question you should be asking,” John says, and he hears tears he won't shed, he hears Sean's brogue in his voice and can't be fucked to care, “is where are his keys, and has he seen them since he took me away from my men?”

 

 

 _They came for me_ , he thinks, proven right and stunned to be right, in the way a man can only be when no one has ever come for him before. But even that turns to horror, as he really should have known, because what hasn't, since the fever came and Madre left with it?

 

 

“Take him to Howell!” Billy orders, and John tells himself Howell can fix his leg.

 

 

“Oh, come on,” he says when he sees Howell's face. “I'm sure we've all seen worse.”

 

 

“I'll do what I can,” Howell says.

 

 

“What does that mean? What does that mean?” And it's Sean who is panicking with John's voice, because no, no, there can't be anything else, what more can they do to him, hasn't it been enough yet?

 

 

“Would you like me to clear the room?” Howell asks as he unrolls his kit.

 

 

“Why would I want you to clear the room?”

 

 

“When the shock sets in, you may lose faculties. Some men lose their bowels. I can do it with as few as three or four men.”

 

 

“We're not going anywhere,” Dooley says like it's comforting.

 

 

“I don't want this,” John gasps.

 

 

“If it doesn't come off quickly, you won't make it three days.”

 

 

“Did you not fucking hear me?! I said I do not want this!” And it's a snarl this time, a choked snarl because no. No, they will not turn his body to a cage, they will not leave him trapped, they can't!

 

 

“You'll die. This way, there's a very good chance to prevent it.”

 

 

_I should already be dead. Mairin said it, Da said it, Conor only didn't because he was always so damned quiet, I'm a twin without his other half, I should already be dead and that would be better than crippled, then forever shackled._

 

 

“The crew will look after you. Don't worry about that,” Muldoon says, and his sincerity only makes it worse.

 

 

“Hold him down.”

 

 

“It'll be all right, mate.”

 

 

 

Irial screams as they hold him down, she screams as the men's daemons try to keep her down and John struggles as she does, screams _no_ again and again for all the good it does.. Fox, wildcat, wolf, dhole, eagle, tiger, on and on in every shape she can think of.

 

 

When Howell cuts down, John Silver screams, and his jackal lets out a wild, desperate howl.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

 

“Release those men.”

 

“What? But, Captain -”

 

“I know what they did. I don’t care. I won’t hold pirates captive, not on this ship. Not after what’s happened.” He looks to Vane. “Keep your men in line,” he says, before giving his sailing orders. “Ready the guns! Full complement!”

 

“What’s the target?” Billy asks, and his wolfhound is bristling, angry at James’ declaration that the men who tried to commandeer the ship are to be set loose. James is dimly aware of Miranda just behind him, Arete settled beside her, and they say nothing, just continue to watch. James looks to Miranda for the answer, and she smiles a bitter smile, the same one as when she’d told him Alfred would be coming to the New World.

 

 

She tilts her head and that’s all the answer that James needs. “Whatever’s left,” he says flatly, and they watch Charles Town burn. If he thinks he hears another howl from within the bowels of the ship, he assumes it's all in his head.

 

James thinks nothing of Billy's Morgaine and her anger until he and Miranda go below and he pushes open the door to his cabin. There’s blood and soot everywhere, and an axe on the floor. Oddly, it’s bloodied on the blunt side, not the blade. James whirls around at the sound of footsteps and finds Muldoon, who hadn't been on deck. Muldoon, who's shaking and blood-spattered. “What the fuck happened? And where’s Silver?” Silver will probably know every little detail by now, and clearly James is going to need an in-depth report.

 

The otter on Muldoon’s shoulder makes an angry hissing sound as her human answers. “He’s with Howell. Those fuckers Billy says you told us to let go? Their ringleader took the blunt side of the axe to Mr. Silver’s leg when he wouldn’t give them what they asked him for. Howell had to take almost half his left leg, there wasn’t any way to save it. And his daemon…” Muldoon, whose eyes are red-rimmed as if he’d been crying, reaches up for his daemon, cuddling her as she climbs down into his arms.

 

“She _changed_ ,” the daemon whispers. “Over and over, so many shapes, fighting us. And then when she stopped, when Howell brought the blade down - the _howl_ she made…”

 

 

So that was what it was. Not his imagination after all.

 

James clenches his fists, his jaw. Then, without a word, he stalks away, Mona a huge shadow at his side. Miranda and Arete follow, and he or Mona should probably discourage it, but they can’t find the words. The room that serves Howell as an infirmary is dark and the air is foul. He’s cleaned Silver up, it looks like, because there’s wadded cloth, stained with blood and other things, in a corner, and the man himself is lying quiet and far too still. He would look to be dead, except his daemon is there beside him. Like the fox, there’s swirls of gold flecks along her side, but now she’s…

 

 

“A jackal,” Howell says, his own daemon fidgeting on the empty shelf cleared for her use. “But she slipped into some kind of cat for a little while so I don’t think she’s settled yet. I’ve never heard of anyone their age unsettled, never.”

 

 

“I don’t give a damn about that, Howell, I knew Iri- Emilia was unsettled. Will they live?” James snaps.

 

 

“I don’t know, Captain. There’s a good chance. Mr. Silver is healthy, in the prime of life, but amputation in particular takes everyone differently. He’d do better if we were in Nassau, as we were when you had to take Randall’s leg. Recovering in here… I do my best, but it’s a ship.”

 

 

There’s silence, then Mona says, “When he can be moved, bring them to our cabin. He can sleep on the window seat. The air is less stuffy there, and the sunlight from the windows can’t hurt, and it might help.” James looks at her and almost objects, but Arete twines around Mona’s legs to express his approval.

 

 

The daemons like Silver, and he - he doesn’t really want to object. He looks at Miranda, who only shrugs.

 

 

Three hours later, Silver is a silent presence in the cabin, but his Irial is stirring, whispering something in Mona’s ear that makes her growl softly. Irial whines, trying to shift away, but Mona cuddles her close. “Don’t fuss now, little one, it’s done,” she says briskly, then looks up at James and Miranda, watching curiously. “The Spanish didn’t get to the gold, they fled from illness. Silver here thought we were going to double-cross him, so he did it first. Gave the location to Rackham. We might still have time, Iri thinks they were waiting for Bonny to get back from Port Royal.”

 

 

For a moment, James is too angry to think. “Goddamn it,” he snarls, then takes a deep breath. “The scouts are both dead. If anyone asks, it was one of them who sold it. Whichever one named Silver to Vane’s quartermaster. We can’t afford the fallout if they know it was him.” It would serve Silver right, to be handed over to the crew’s mercy, but looking at him now Flint can’t do it. It would be hard to say he hasn’t paid for his previous betrayals with this new show of loyalty, and from the way Mona curls around Irial, she thinks they’ve earned protection.

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“We need to talk, James,” Miranda says. Arete is curled up with Mona and Irial near the window seat where Silver’s been placed, but at her words his ears prick up. Mona whines faintly and James looks like he’s bracing himself.

 

 

“What about?”

 

 

About a great many things, of course, not least of which is that she will not be going back to the farmhouse to molder away. But she hasn’t fully marshaled her arguments for that, and there’s another issue just as pressing. “When I brought you _Meditations_ , and we argued. You said -”

 

 

“I didn’t mean it, Miranda. I’m sorry, and I should never have -”

 

 

“You did mean it, on some level, James,” Miranda cuts him off. They have already faced down the external consequences of killing Alfred, of ten years of grief, and now she is tired of the gulf between them. It’s narrowed since he came around to her plan with Abigail, but it is still there. “If nothing else, part of you must blame me for convincing you to be less proper to begin with.” She takes a deep breath. “After all, there is part of me that blames you - that blames you and Thomas both - for being so damned reckless near the end.”

 

 

For a moment she sees fury in James’ eyes, but then he slumps in his chair, nodding. “You wanted us to show more caution, and we did exactly the opposite,” he says quietly. “I thought it was about what we’d become to each other, but that wasn’t really it, was it?”

 

 

“Only a little. I knew that your loving each other was something that could be used against you, but without the politics the risks of it all were less. If nothing else, Alfred wouldn’t have been looking for something - oh, he and Thomas always fought, but for the most part they would ignore each other until the next squabble, and then go right back to ignoring again. But with all of it together…”

 

 

The only way that Thomas and James being lovers had doomed them, in the end, was that it made both of them blind, too giddy with the high of it to realize it was time to take stock, and figure out how to protect their new happiness when the very fact of that happiness was their weakest point. And Miranda… Well, she knows now that while she had been thinking of protection, she hadn’t known enough for it to have done any good anyway.

 

 

“We could have listened to you,” James says.

 

 

“Maybe. But now we know it wouldn’t have mattered. Neither you nor Thomas would have given up on Nassau completely - I knew that, even when I said you should. But I thought then that stepping back until things quieted would be enough, that it would fool Alfred, and people would stop watching us too closely as the gossip eased. Now…”

 

 

“ _This is what civilization is!”_ Peter had said. That isn’t quite what Miranda remembers, but she isn’t sure it matters now. She will see that blade flashing in the sunlight for the rest of her life, she thinks, and she will never fully lose the sound of that clock-tick echoing in her ears. They left Charles Town burning behind them, and Arete and Mona have adopted a new daemon as theirs, Mona curled around Irial even now while Arete watches over them. Miranda looks at James and for the first time, she doesn’t see the man she first met hiding inside him. They are not who they were, the last vestiges of the lady and the lieutenant burned away in Charles Town’s fires. They recognize each other but no one else would now - perhaps not even Thomas.

 

 

And so, she has a choice to make. There is only going forward, and there is only one way to do that which can be borne now.

 

 

She promised herself that she would never be an afterthought again.

 

 

“Now,” Miranda continues, “we know that Peter had chosen to save his own skin, and not even slip us a warning.” She could have sympathized with his fear for what Alfred might do to him, what that would also mean for Abigail, if he’d only cared enough to _warn_ them somehow. They could have fled _together_ ; she or James would have hit Thomas over the head and dragged him away unconscious if that was what it took, she knows that much. As it is, she can only feel that he used his fear as an excuse, a justification - and look what he’d gotten out of it, probably by blackmailing Alfred right back.

 

“So now we know it was over the moment Peter was the only ally we thought we had. He was too close to us,” Arete says quietly, getting up to pace the cabin and stretch his legs a bit.

 

 

“I’m not at all sorry we killed him,” Mona adds. “Poor Abigail and Helios though, I do hope things go well for them.” Tucked in against her, Irial whines and on the window seat Silver murmurs in a language that sounds vaguely Celtic. Mona nuzzles Irial’s ears and they both go quiet.

 

 

There’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” James calls.

 

 

It’s Billy, who glances at Silver and the cuddled daemons before he speaks. “The crew voted. Once he’s up and about again, Silver’s our new quartermaster. And DeGroot spotted Rackham’s ship, it looks like they’re almost to Division Bay. Vane claims he can talk them down, but half the crew is still angry over the takeover and they don’t want to hear it from him.”

 

 

“Did DeGroot give orders to increase our speed?” James asks, coming around his desk to lean against it. On the way he strokes his fingers over the top of Mona’s head, perilously close to Irial’s ears. Miranda takes the seat he’d vacated, while Arete continues to pace.

 

 

“He did, yeah.”

 

 

“I’ll be on deck shortly,” James says with a nod. Billy turns to go, then pauses at the door.

 

 

 

“Oh - the men want to tell Silver themselves, once he wakes up.”

 

 

“Of course they do.”

 

 

Once Billy’s gone, James sighs, turning to face Miranda and leaning against the side of his desk. “You’d probably make a good captain, if you're so determined to stay,” he says, with a smile she remembers from a carriage ride through London, ten years and a lifetime ago.

 

 

“Oh yes, if I knew how to read a map.”

 

 

“We could work on that.”

 

 

“We might have to,” Miranda says, suddenly feeling that now is the moment. She watches James’ smile fade.

 

 

“Miranda -”

 

 

“No, James. I told you, if I’m your partner, I’m your partner. I haven’t changed my mind.”

 

 

“I -” James is cut off by Billy shouting for him through the door. “I have to go, but we - we’ll talk.”

 

 

Miranda drums her fingers on the desk when the door closes, considering her options. “He’s annoyingly overprotective. You might learn that for yourself, if I’m reading him correctly,” she tells the unconscious man on the windowsill.

 

 

Arete chuckles. “Miri, are you really going to let him just leave us in here, and _then_ try and tell him why we’re not going back inland? Wouldn’t it be better to make our case before we bring it up?”

 

 

That’s a good point, but how can she - oh. That might just work. Hmm. “I think we need to go up on deck, Arete. James is going to need a negotiator with this Rackham person, after all.”

 

 

<><><>

 

 

“The whore’s contact double-crossed us!”

 

 

That shout from Featherstone is the first Jack knows of the problem. They’re not quite to the site of the gold - a storm out of the southeast had delayed them, first because they’d tried to avoid it and second to repair the damage as best they could when avoiding it hadn’t worked. Still, it’s in spyglass view, only now -

 

 

“Fuck,” Anne says as her Eagon growls, taking the spyglass from Featherstone and scowling. Jack pulls out his own and looks as well. Yes, that is the Spanish warship flying Flint’s flag. Damn it, hadn’t Charles meant to get that warship as recompense for Eleanor Guthrie stealing his hostage to give her to Flint? If he hadn’t, then…

 

 

“Not our problem,” Caelia says from her place on his shoulder, though he can feel her quivering and knows she’s thinking of Tani. “Our problem is what to do about Flint.”

 

 

Hold on a moment. There’s a second flag being drawn up, and it… It’s Charles’ flag? The Ranger flag he knows so well is definitely flying beside Flint’s, which means what? That Charles is there and teamed up with Flint? That there was another mutiny and he’s allied to Flint’s replacement? That Flint’s crew killed Charles’ new crew and stole the flag in order to trick him?

 

 

“We have a dilemma,” he finally says, putting his spyglass into his coat. “Theoretically, we are reconciled with Captain Vane. However, there is no way to know why Flint’s warship has Charles’ flag. If he is now allied to Flint or Flint’s successor we must assume they are here to challenge us.”

 

 

“We do have the lead,” Featherstone says carefully.

 

 

“Not enough of one. They’ll hit us while we’re getting to the gold,” Anne says.

 

 

“There’s a longboat!” Paul yells down from the crow’s nest. “Looks like Vane, Flint, and some woman!”

 

 

A woman? “Not Eleanor Guthrie?” Jack yells back up.

 

 

“No! I think it’s Flint’s witch!”

 

 

Oh. Well, that’s unexpected.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, fun fact, the Maiden was a real contemporary device in this period, a predecessor to the guillotine much like the not-quite contemporary Halifax Gibbet. 
> 
>  
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_(beheading)

**Author's Note:**

> A quick word about the man with the lynx daemon. Yes, we will see more of him, yes, he's an OC and I know many people find them anathema. Quite frankly, that's irrelevant. He serves the purposes of exploring what happens when someone adamantly denying their past no longer can, exploring one of the few relationships people can share that Black Sails didn't do, and facilitating a meeting very important to when this series goes more openly AU. Sorry if you don't like his presence, but I kinda need him.


End file.
